•ECONO COPY, 
16^9. 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
{15\^-^ 

Cliap,..\r:„.. Copyright No. 

Shelf..H.2^.5_. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



EDUCATIONAL AIMS AND 
EDUCATIONAL VALUES 



^^^ 



EDUCATIONAL AIMS 



AND 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 



BY 



PAUL H. HANUS 

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF THE HISTORY AND ART OF TEACHING, 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
1899 

AU rights reserved 



u^^ iff 99 






:^ 



\ 



\\ 



Copyright, lii^g, 
Bv THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



TWO CO! 



.US-IV6D. 




Kortoooft ^rffis 

J. S. Cuehing & Co. — Berwick S: Smith 

Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 



PREFACE 

This book is written for laymen who are interested 
in Education, as well as for professional students and 
teachers. It consists of a series of essays on contem- 
porary educational problems. In the first five chap- 
ters the attempt is made to formulate the aims of 
elementary and secondary education, and to describe 
the scope and methods of an education that meets the 
demands of modern life, both in its provisions for the 
development of the individual and in its training for 
social service. The remaining chapters deal with the 
professional training of the college-bred teacher, and 
with the services of John Amos Comenius who, in the 
seventeenth century, advocated nineteenth-century edu- 
cational reforms. 

Though written at different times, and delivered as 
lectures or addresses to various audiences of teachers 
and laymen, and subsequently printed as independent 
articles, these chapters really constitute — and this is 
especially true of the first five chapters — a progressive 
attempt to accomplish a single, somewhat comprehen- 
sive, purpose ; namely, to disentangle from the con- 
temporary educational confusion, in both theory and 



VI 



PREFACE 



practice, our educational aims^ and to examine these 
aims in the light of present and future needs. 

The reader will therefore find that there are occa- 
sional repetitions ; but he will also find, I think, that 
these repetitions are essential to the full discussion of 
the particular point then under consideration; they 
are not repetitions pure and simple. 

The first, third, fifth, and eighth chapters have been 
printed, in nearly their present form, in the Educa- 
tional Review; and the second, fourth, and sixth 
have similarly appeared in the School Review. 

PAUL H. HANUS. 

Harvard University, 
May, 1899. 



CONTENTS 



I 

PAGB 

Educational Aims and Educational Values . . i 

II 

A Recent Tendency in Secondary Education Examined 21 

III 

Attempted Improvements in the Course of Study . 43 

IV 

What should the Modern Secondary School aim to 
Accomplish? 71 

V 

Secondary Education as a Unifying Force in Ameri- 
can Life iii 

VI 

The Preparation %f the High-School Teacher of 

Mathematics 139 

VII 

The Study of Education at Harvard University . 165 

VIII 

The Permanent Influence of John Amos Comenius . 193 

vij 



I 



EDUCATIONAL AIMS AND EDUCA- 
TIONAL VALUES 



I 



EDUCATIONAL AIMS AND EDUCA- 
TIONAL VALUES 

Of the questions underlying the making of courses 
of study the question of educational values is among 
the most important. Unless we are willing to adopt 
blindly a recommended or prescribed course of study 
which some one else has made, — some one, perhaps, 
who has just as blindly followed some one else, — the 
question of educational values must be intelligently 
considered. If certain subjects are chosen for a course 
of study because they are deemed suitable to occupy 
the time and attention of children and youth, there 
must be a reason for this choice — or there should be 
— independent of personal prejudices or mere tradi- 
tion. If other subjects are preferred, there should 
likewise be a clear and valid reason for the prefer- 
ence. Further, after a subject has been chosen, it is 
not enough to recommend that it should be pursued 
for four years or for three or two years: we need to 
know why that subject may justly claim the proportion 
of time allotted to it. 

3 



4 EDUCATIONAL AIMS AND 

That is to say : choice of subject-matter and rela- 
tive time allotment being rationally dependent on the 
educational values of the several subjects, the formu- 
lation of these values constitutes educational principles 
which we need in order to construct our programmes 
on a rational basis. 

In this chapter the attempt is made to find some of 
these educational principles. The attempt is first made 
to set forth, in general terms, the educational values 
of all the subjects of instruction, and next, to deter- 
mine the relative educational values of the different 
subjects without explicitly taking into account the 
stages of development through which the pupil passes. 
The principles thus obtained are then applied to de- 
termine the relative educational values of the different 
subjects during the stages of elementary and secondary 
education. 

It goes without saying that the principles given 
below are not regarded as a final solution of the 
question of educational values. This question is too 
comprehensive to make such a conclusion possible. 
Moreover, much intelligent experimenting must ensue 
before this theoretical solution can be verified in prac- 
tice. Nevertheless, the principles referred to seem to 
me to have a real value, because they offer at least 
a provisional basis for the rational and not merely 
imitative construction of courses of study. 

With this explanation, I trust that the somewhat 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 5 

abstract and seemingly dogmatic form, in which for 
the sake of brevity and, at the same time, of direct- 
ness and clearness I have been obliged to present 
the discussion, will not be misunderstood. It is not 
possible, in the space at my disposal, to make any 
extended argument for the positions taken. But I 
can indicate the nature of the argument. 



It is evident that any estimate of educational values 
must ultimately depend on educational aims, The 
studies chosen are the means (not'^fie^ole means, of 
course, but the most important means) for the realiza- 
tion of those aims. The conception of the end to be 
attained_.must therefore determine the value of the 
means proposed ; and any consideration of educa- 
tional values must accordingly include a considera- 
tion of educational aims. 

By the educational value of a subject I mean its 
efficacy in promoting the realization of the aim of 
education) The aim of education is to prepare for 
complete living.! To live completely means to be as 
useful as possible and to be happy./ By usefulness is 
meant service, i.e. any activity which promotes the 
material or the spiritual interests of mankind, one or 
both. To be happy one must enjoy both his work 
and his leisure. 



6 EDUCATIONAL AIMS AND 

One man's usefulness and happiness may be best pro- 
moted through intellectual activity, another's through 
the work of his hands ; one man may be most useful 
and happy as an artist or a musician, another as a 
moral or spiritual leader. It is not necessary to multi- 
ply instances. The kind of work a man voluntarily 
engages in, and its value for himself and for society, 
will evidently always depend on his dominant inter- 
ests, i.e. on his motives or incentives to activity, and 
on his skill. Since skill is only fully developed power, 
we may say, in general, that, physical vigor being 
assumed, a man's usefulness and happiness depend 
on intellectual incentives and power ; artistic or 
aesthetic incentives and power ; constructive incen- 
tives and power as applied to material things ; charac- 
ter, comprising ethical incentives and conduct. 

Although in what precedes the emphasis has been 
laid on preparation for usefulness and the happiness 
which depends on usefulness, it is evident that, while 
a man's happiness depends in large part on his use- 
fulness, it also depends on the proper and adequate 
enjoyment of whatever leisure he may earn. Conse- 
quently a man requires careful preparation for the 
proper and adequate enjoyment of the refined pleas- 
ures of cultivated life as well as for usefulness. But 
this preparation obviously depends, like his prepara- 
tion for usefulness, on the scope, kind, degree, and 
permanence of his interests and power. 



y EDUCATIONAL VALUES 7 

^Consequently the educational values of different 
subjects, i.e. their efficacy in promoting the realization 
of the aim of education as defined above, consist 
(a) in the scope, kind, strength, and permanence of 
the incentives to activity; and (d) in the kind, degree, 
and permanence of the power to think and to execute 
that those subjects may develop. 

Here, then, we have a common measure of educa- 
tional value. Its factors are incentmes and potuer. 
The different kinds of incentives and power, and the 
conditions under which they develop strength and per- 
manence, next demand attention. 

No one subject is capable of yielding all these 
incentives equally, but they are found in varying 
degrees in all subjects ; the desire to know, to under- 
stand, to master the subject of pure mathematics or 
of physics, for example, is nearly a purely intellectual 
incentive; the desire to emulate the virtues of some 
moral or spiritual leader, or the devotion to duty of 
some hero of history or of literature is mainly an ethi- 
cal incentive ; the charm of the fine arts, impelling to 
exercise in the use of the pencil or the brush, is 
chiefly an aesthetic or artistic incentive; the fascina- 
tion of manual construction, impelling to the use of 
tools in shaping material things, is, similarly, mainly 
a constructive incentive. It is evident, therefore, that 
the kinds of incentives to activity, whether intellectual, 
aesthetic, moral, or constructive, derivable from the 



8 EDUCATIONAL AIMS AND 

course of study, depend on content (the nature of the 
subject-matter). 

Since incentives are impulses to activity growing 
out of interest in the subject-matter, they will develop 
strength and permanence when interest in the subject- 
/ matter is strong, real, and permanent. Interest is 
impossible unless the subject is understood to some 
degree at least, and unless the pupil believes he has 
some capacity for it. Sufficient time must always be 
allowed in practice to determine whether the pupil's 
interest is real or merely imitative and spurious. Real 
interest will always be accompanied by capacity for 
a subject, and may usually be recognized by persist- 
ent, independent, and successful pursuit of a subject ; 
for the pupil's spontaneous activity and achievement 
will always be along the lines of his preferences. In- 
dependent pursuit does not mean without the teacher's 
guidance, but it does mean without the teacher's con- 
stant urging or assistance. Real interest is accordingly 
the sole condition of strong and permanent incentives. 
J Power means ability to do something — to bring 
kbout results. The results achieved will always be in 
some one field of activity, however; and the kind of 
power developed through the pursuit of a given sub- 
ject will consequently be usually restricted to power 
in dealing with data of a particular sort. That is to 
say, power in physics is different from power in Latin ; 
and these forms of power are different from power in 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 9 

plastic art or pure matl^ematics, as these last are differ- 
ent from each other. There is no such thing as power 
in general that can be cultivated through the pursuit 
of any one subject, and can then be drawn upon at 
any time for successful achievement in other subjects. 
That a man shows power first in classics and afterward 
in mathematics or botany, for example, does not prove 
that the man's mathematical or scientific ability was 
developed through the classics. It proves only that 
the man has both linguistic and mathematical or sci- 
entific ability. It does happen, of course, that differ- 
ent subjects like mathematics and physics, or physics 
and chemistry, or drawing and painting, are closely 
related; and hence that the data of one subject are 
often found to some extent in another, and also that 
the method of one subject can be appropriately ap- 
plied to another. In such cases the power developed 
in the pursuit of one subject may, to some extent, be 
carried over to related subjects. But, in general, the 
relations of the subjects will not be close enough to 
justify the assumption that power may be developed 
through one subject for use in other subjects. 

We may say, therefore, that the kinds of power 
developed by a given subject will be: (a) specific — 
depending on the particular data with which the sub- 
ject deals (the nature of the subject-matter); and 
{d) general — depending on the extent to which the 
same or similar data are found in other subjects, and 



10 EDUCATIONAL AIMS AND 

the extent to which the method of one subject may 
be applied to other subjects. 

The power developed will always be chiefly specific : 
but if, through correlation, the mutual ramification and 
interdependence of subjects are traced; and further, if 
the method of one subject is explicitly carried over to 
other subjects to which it can be legitimately applied, the 
power developed will also be, to some extent, general. 

The kinds of power developed through the different 
subjects having been described, the conditions under 
which power develops strength and permanence must 
now be examined. Power is developed for the sake 
of cultivating desirable habits of thought, expression 
(in words or in some other appropriate way), achieve- 
ment, and conduct ; since such habits constitute use- 
fulness and usually bring happiness. 

The degree and permanence of any power, and the 
consequent inculcation of desirable habits of thought, 
expression, achievement, and conduct, are developed 
through continuity and intensiveness in the pursuit 
of any of the subjects of instruction, each within its 
own field ; but such power can be developed economi- 
cally (advantageously) only through interest, i.e. only 
when the subject actually yields one or more of the 
incentives enumerated above ; or, in other words, the 
conditions under which strength and permanence of 
power are developed are continuity and intensiveness 
in the pursuit of any subject, based on interest. 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES II 

It is, of course, true that power habitually exercised, 
even without interest, may result in the attainment of 
the beneficent "virtues of work" which, even when 
acquired through mere drudgery, contribute to useful- 
ness and happiness. It must be borne in mind, how- 
ever, that work without interest is drudgery, whatever 
the achievement may be ; while work with interest is 
a constant source of happiness. During the school 
period the virtues of work cannot, however, be ad- 
vantageously developed without interest, and it is 
doubtful if they ever can. During the school period 
aversion and evasion are more frequently cultivated 
than power and skill through the forced pursuit 
of permanently uninteresting subjects — subjects for 
which the learner has no capacity. When that does 
not happen, the pernicious habit of being satisfied 
with inadequate or partial achievement is very likely 
to be the result. In neither case does the individual 
develop his real capacity, nor does he acquire right 
habits. Occasionally, through some unusually strong 
extraneous incentive, a pupil will pursue successfully 
the apparently uninteresting, but such cases are rare 
and usually temporary. In no case can the degree 
of power thus developed be compared with the power 
developed through real interest, and the only result- 
ing permanence to be thought of is the permanence of 
moderate instead of increasing power. Even in adult 
life, without interest and capacity (for the two always 



12 EDUCATIONAL AIMS AND 

go together), power and skill and the consequent 
** virtues of work " must be developed, if at all, through 
extraneous motives. It must be evident, also, that, 
without interest, both in youth and in adult life, power 
is not advantageously nor economically cultivated, be- 
cause the individual is not working along the lines of 
least resistance ; so that whatever .power and skill he 
may develop and however industrious he may be, his 
accomplishment, both in respect to quantity and qual- 
ity, will fall behind the accomplishment of others 
possessing interest and capacity in the same field ; 
and far behind what his own achievements might be 
in the direction of his own interest and capacity. The 
effect of such incomplete or reduced achievement, 
both on the usefulness and consequent happiness of 
an individual, is obvious. The fundamental condition 
of the advantageous development of increasing power, 
i.e. of the degree and permanence of power, is, accord- 
ingly, interest. 

II 

From the foregoing it appears that incentives and 
power may be cultivated by all the subjects in the 
course of study, each subject yielding its own peculiar 
incentives and power. Since these constitute our com- 
mon measure of educational values, equal educational 
values would be accorded to all subjects, provided 
only that they develop interest ; for, as we have seen, 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 1 3 

interest means incentives, and incentives lead to activ- 
ity which may develop power. But we have still to 
compare with each other the incentives developed 
through the different subjects. If we find certain sub- 
jects yielding higher incentives than others, or subjects 
richer in incentives than others, we must accord to 
such subjects a higher educational value than to the 
others. 

>::^ Character and disposition, so far as they are deter- 
mined by education, depend on social and ethical in- 
centives and wise discipline. Sound health, good 
character, and a generous disposition being secured, the 
extent and quality of a man's usefulness and happiness ' 
are determined (i) by the harmony of his interest and ' 
capacity with his life work, and (2) by the scope of his ^ 
participation in the varied interests of life. 

Important aims of education must, therefore, be to 

subjects the pupil to the influence of social and ethical 

incentives, to render him responsive to the varied 

interests of life, and, as he grows older, to discover 

[what his permanent interests and capacities really are. 

\These aims can be promoted only by a wise use of the 

icourse of study. Before we can make such a use of the 

/ course of study we must examine the different subjects 

I of instruction in order to ascertain, if possible, (i) the 

\ characteristic incentives and (2) the kind or kinds of 

power, which under good teaching (instruction and 

discipline) the several subjects may develop. 



14 EDUCATIONAL AIMS AND 

The subjects of instruction in the modern school 
course of study deal with the institutions, ideals, and 
conduct of men, and with external nature ; namely : 
(i) Languages and literatures; (2) social studies — his- 
tory (including the history of industry and commerce 
as well as political history), government, descriptive eco- 
nomics ; (3) art (including the history of art, as well as 
drawing, painting, modelling, music) ; (4) mathematics ; 
(5) physical and biological science ; (6) manual training. 
^ Of these subjects, literature and the social studies, 
and some forms of art, besides being rich in incen- 
tives, have an ethical content; they portray, either 
directly or by contrast, the highest ideals of achieve- 
ment] | " beauty, honor, duty, and love," and reveal 
the effect of these ideals on human aspirations and 
conduct. These ideals are the highest ideals of the 
race. When they dominate the actions of men, they 
usually insure the best and most complete usefulness 
and happiness. .'The incentives growing out of these 
ideals are therefore higher than all others. That is 
to say, ethical incentives are the highest incentives. \ 
Hence, when language and literature, history, the 
social studies, and art develop interest, these subjects 
have a higher educational value than all others ; for 
they are not only rich in possible incentives, but they 
embody also the highest incentives ; and through in- 
terest they may develop permanent habits of thought 
and action in harmony with those incentives. 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 1 5 

Without interest these subjects can have only a 
moderate educational value in spite of their content; 
for they cannot be economically employed to develop 
desirable habits of thought, achievement, and conduct 
that give promise of permanence. That is, they cannot 
be advantageously employed to develop usefulness and 
happiness. They have a moderate educational value, 
even without interest, because, even without interest, 
they may be used to develop, although wastefully, the 
virtues of work through urgent extraneous motives. 
Moreover, these subjects are needed for ethical and 
social enlightenment. No human being should be a 
stranger to the highest ideals of the race, since every 
one can be influenced to some extent by them. Hence, 
the subjects embodying these ideals have some educa- 
tional value for all pupils, and all pupils should be re- 
quired to give sufficient attention to them. 

The other subjects named (mathematics, natural 
science, and manual training) either have no social or 
ethical content whatever, or involve social and ethical 
incentives, i,e, incentives affecting human relations 
only incidentally ; and mathematics is especially narrow 
in the range of its possible incentives : Hence, without 
interest, these subjects have only feeble educational 
value of any sort. With interest, these subjects may 
be advantageously used for the development of habits 
of efficiency, i.e. of thorough and successful achieve- 
ment. Such habits render their possessor useful, and 



l6 EDUCATIONAL AIMS AND 

usually happy ; and hence the subjects which develop 
these habits possess an educational value dependent on 
the kind and degree of usefulness and happiness which 
they develop. But as the usefulness and happiness of 
an individual are not of the highest order unless they 
are determined by the highest ideals, and as these 
ideals are usually not involved and are not necessarily 
involved at all in the pursuit of the subjects now under 
consideration, these subjects are, in general, inferior 
in educational value to those of the group first 
considered. 

Ill 

j ll have now formulated in general terms the educa- 
tional values of all the subjects of instruction, and 
have found these values to consist in the incentives 
Uto activity and the power based on these incentives 
which they severally may develop. We have found 
the relative educational values to consist in the rich- 
ness of the several subjects in incentives, and in the 
relative values of the incentives they are capable of 
yielding. We have found the highest incentives and 
the greatest variety of incentives in the group of sub- 
jects dealing with human conduct and achievement, 
and hence for those pupils in whom these subjects 
develop interest we have found that these subjects 
have a higher educational value than all others. It 
remains to apply these results to obtain an estimate 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 1 7 

of the relative educational values of the different sub- 
jects during the two stages of elementary and secondary- 
education. 

The special aims of elementary education are : — 
(a) To nourish the mind of the child through the 
course of study which should comprise an orderly 
presentation of the whole field of knowledge in its 
elements, and to provide the opportunity for the exer- 
cise of all his powers, mental, moral, aesthetic, manual, 
or constructive, through good instruction and wise 
discipline ; {b) to guard and promote his normal 
physical development. 

In the earlier stages of this period there are not, 
of course, distinct subjects at all : there is simply 
the diversified field of closely correlated knowledge ; 
and because everything is interesting and equally 
yields incentives to activity, it is difficult, with pos- 
sibly one exception, to think of different educational 
values for the different forms of activity. The one 
exception is the mother-tongue. This is the instru- 
ment of all the pupil's acquisitions and of common 
intercourse with his fellows. Moreover, it is the 
embodiment of rich stores of information and of 
the highest ideals of the race. If instruction in 
the mother-tongue is not limited merely to the study 
of its form and structure, but really serves, as it 
should, as the means of exploring and interpreting 
both the world of external nature and the world of 



1 8 EDUCATIONAL AIMS AND 

man, the mother-tongue will be richer in incentives 
and possess higher incentives than all other forms of 
knowledge ; and it may therefore have a higher edu- 
cational value than all other subjects. 

Continuous development from the stage of early- 
childhood covered by the period of primary or ele- 
mentary education into the stage of later childhood 
and youth covered by the period of secondary educa- 
tion ^ does not involve the abandonment of these 
aims ; nor does it alter essentially the relative impor- 
tance of the mother-tongue as the field of knowledge 
gradually diverges into distinct subjects, until the 
pupil arrives at the later stages of this period. On 
the contrary, these aims must continue to influence 
the pupil's education throughout the entire formative 
period. But they are subject to some modification. 
The pupil's mind must still be nourished, but it is no 
longer possible, except within certain well-defined 
limits, for him to pursue simultaneously the elements 
of all knowledge, when that knowledge has diverged 
into distinct subjects. During this stage, the pupil's 
individuality, his own tastes and capacities, emerge, 
as the knowledge to be acquired diverges more and 
more into distinct subjects. 

The distinct emergence of these tastes and capaci- 

^ Roughly speaking, this period comprises the later years of what is 
now the grammar school period and the whole of the high school period, 
and often beyond. 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 19 

ties is natural and inevitable. The clear recognition 
of them during the period of secondary education is 
important for the sake of the ultimate organization 
of the pupil's mental life through dominant groups 
of ideas. Through these dominant groups of ideas, 
i.e. through his permanent incentives, the pupil's 
life habits are gradually formed, and his mental life 
acquires the richness, stability, alertness, and vigor on 
which his highest usefulness and happiness depend. 
> The special aim of secondary education and the 
teacher's greatest responsibility — a responsibility not 
often recognized or acknowledged hitherto — there- 
fore consist in the discovery and the special develop- 
ment of each pupil's dominarLt, interests, in so far as 
these interests represent possibilities of development 
in harmony with the general aim of education, and in 
the constant use of the course of study as a means 
of intelligent Experimentation until the pupil's self- 
revelation is complete.^ During this stage, therefore, 
as the pupil advances, the relative educational values 
of the different subjects for each pupil correspond 
more and more to the relative ' degrees of interest 
they develop. 

It is manifest that, in the application of this princi- 
ple to practice, great care must be taken that caprice 
or chance interests do not dissipate the pupil's powers 
or narrow the whole range of his development. Flexi- 
ble programmes with a wide range of electives are 



■%. 



20 EDUCATIONAL AIMS AND VALUES 

needed ; but it must be remembered that the test of 
real interest can only be revealed by intensiveness 
and continuity in the pursuit of a subject during a 
sufficiently long period. What that period is, the 
judgment of the teacher must decide in each case. 
But the proper application of this principle will lead 
to that supremely desirable, although, at present, ap- 
parently unattainable result, that each man, while still 
a youth, will learn to know his powers and defects, 
and will be aided to select deliberately that calling 
for which he is best fitted by nature. Though at pres- 
ent apparently unattainable, this ideal, as a very im- 
portant result of all our educational endeavor, does 
not seem to me by any means beyond our reach. 
Who can doubt that we should strive to attain it.-* 



II 



A RECENT TENDENCY IN SECOND- 
ARY EDUCATION EXAMINED 



II 



A RECENT TENDENCY IN SECOND- 
ARY EDUCATION EXAMINED 

The recent history of secondary school programmes, 
especially of high school programmes, in this country, 
reveals an interesting and significant tendency. Not 
many years ago, the secondary school programme con- 
sisted of a single course of study, or at most of two 
courses of study, which must be pursued, as laid down, 
by pupils who desired to graduate and obtain the di- 
ploma of the school. The substance of the preferred 
course of study was Latin, Greek, and Mathematics. 
The programme usually comprised also a smattering of 
general history, including the history of English litera- 
ture, the writing of a few English essays or ** composi- 
tions," and occasionally political economy and " mental 
science." This was the classical course always pur- 
sued by those pupils who were going to college ; and to 
it most other pupils possessing, or at least claiming to 
possess, social and intellectual superiority also devoted 
themselves. These pupils thus formed the fortunate 
circle of the intellectual and social ^lite ; and by means 

23 



24 A RECENT TENDENCY IN 

of the classical course those pupils who were not yet of 
this fortunate circle sought to gain admission to it. 

The other course was either like the classical course 
with the Greek left out, and French or German sub- 
stituted in its place ; or it was a course in which 
science and modern languages replaced both Latin and 
Greek. In the latter case, i.e-. when both Latin 
and Greek were omitted, their places were often taken 
by an ill-assorted aggregate of subjects treated rather 
briefly, and called ** English Branches." Because of 
the usually scrappy character of the studies substi- 
tuted for the classics, and because of the inferior in- 
struction often given in these substituted subjects, the 
non-classical course was, at first, and for a long time 
afterward, almost always in fact, as always in reputa- 
tion, inferior to the classical course. It was intended 
for those pupils who had no hope of going to college, 
for those who, presumably, had no ** literary aspira- 
tions " or had no reasonable expectation of rising above 
their present social position, and for the hopelessly dull. 

In spite, however, of this original and not yet obsolete 
inferiority, the non-classical course survived ; and it did 
not merely survive, but it improved in quality, and at 
the same time multiplied " by fission " as the biologists 
would say ; so that in place of a single course, parallel 
to the classical course, two or more such courses came 
to be recognized. Through such changes the original 
secondary school programme has become transformed 



SECONDARY EDUCATION EXAMINED 25 

into a number of parallel courses of study- — there 
being in some large schools as many as seven such 
courses, each one of which leads to graduation and a 
diploma. Moreover, as already intimated, the par- 
tially or wholly non-classical courses have constantly 
improved in quality through changes in the nature 
and arrangement of the subject-matter, and through 
improvements in the teaching, until, in some schools, 
the original inferiority of these courses has wholly 
disappeared; and they are recognized as, in all re- 
spects, equal to the classical course in dignity and edu- 
cational value. At the same time, the classical course 
itself has undergone modifications through the incor- 
poration of science and modern languages, subjects 
at first regarded as essentially foreign to the nature 
and scope of that course. 

It appears, therefore, that in the recent history of 
secondary education, we find a tendency toward the 
multiplication of distinct parallel courses of study, and, 
to a less extent, toward the extension of the scope of 
the traditional classical course of study; and at the 
same time a growing disposition to regard these courses 
of study as of more nearly equal value and dignity 
than heretofore ; or, at any rate, a willingness to believe 
that all these courses of study, through suitable selec- 
tion and arrangement of subject-matter and through 
good teaching, can be made of substantially equal 
efficacy for educational purposes. 



26 A RECENT TENDENCY IN 

Now, it need hardly be pointed out that these 
changes in secondary education are chiefly the re- 
sult of external demands rather than a development 
from within ; that they have resulted mainly from the 
more or less reasonable demands of parents, usually 
influenced by but often independent of their sons and 
daughters, rather than from the deliberate purpose of 
teachers who have convinced themselves by observa- 
tion and reflection of the desirability of these changes. 
The single prescribed course once abandoned has 
never been reestablished, however; and with the quite 
general adoption of several parallel courses, through 
imitation of the larger and more influential schools by 
the smaller and less important, has also come a desire 
on the part of all to justify such programmes by an 
appeal to principles. 

I said the demands of parents for two or more 
parallel courses, leading to the diploma of the school, 
were more or less reasonable. I mean that while par- 
ents often yielded to the caprice of pupils or to the 
unwillingness of pupils to do hard work, while insist- 
ing on a diploma for such work as the pupils were 
willing to do, it, nevertheless, often happened that 
sons and daughters of undoubted intellectual ability 
failed to profit by the classical course to the extent 
which their ability and general willingness to work 
seemed to warrant. Further it was apparent that such 
boys and girls were not interested in the prescribed 



SECONDARY EDUCATION EXAMINED 2l 

work, and often left school for more congenial pur- 
suits. Once out of school they often acquitted them- 
selves in such a way as to leave no doubt of their 
real ability. Moreover, it appeared to intelligent par- 
ents much better that their children should take a 
course of study of alleged and often confessed in- 
feriority, if they could be induced thereby to put 
forth real effort and develop such intellectual tastes 
and capacities as they had, than that they should 
miss such development, in youth, altogether, by leav- 
ing school; or if they remained in school, that they 
should develop the habit of skilfully evading all real 
work, and run the risk of acquiring a real aversion 
to all intellectual effort and conquest. 

Again, the apparent remoteness of the subject-matter 
of the classical course from all the practical concerns 
of life, impressed many intelligent and energetic, but 
uncultivated, parents far more than any alleged and 
usually admitted general disciplinary value that such a 
course of study might have ; and so, both on educa- 
tional and on somewhat narrow utilitarian grounds, 
— the latter much more commonly, — courses of study 
in which the classics should not constitute almost 
all of the subject-matter of instruction were demanded 
and supplied. In other words, it was perceived, rather 
dimly, at first, but with rapidly increasing clearness, 
that individuals differ in their tastes and capacities, 
and consequent reasonable demands, and that a uni- 



28 A RECENT TENDENCY IN 

form course of study for all ignored these differences 
and, therefore, was not adapted to the wants of all 
the pupils. With the recognition of this fact the 
public high school gradually ceased its endeavor to 
impress its preconceived notions of what was good for 
every individual on the parents and on the pupils, 
and began to adapt its opportunities to the real or 
supposed necessities of its pupils and patrons. The 
latest form of this adaptation is, however, not merely 
the establishment of several distinct courses of study, 
one of which a pupil must pursue as laid down, but 
choices are permitted within these courses^ and, further, 
in some important high schools — there are several 
such schools within twenty miles of the State House 
in Boston — at least one of these "courses of study" 
ojfers a wide range of electives throughout. 

The tendency that we have traced in the recent 
history of secondary education is, therefore, a ten- 
dency to arrange the subject-matter of instruction in 
the form of suggestive schedules rather than as man- 
datory programmes ; and to permit each pupil, pre- 
sumably under wise guidance, to select those subjects 
or groups of subjects which are adapted to his wants 
and tastes. 

I purpose now to inquire if this tendency, originally 
impressed on the schools from without, toward making 
the work of the secondary school largely elective is jus- 
tified by sound pedagogical principles, i.e. by valid con- 



SECONDARY EDUCATION EXAMINED 29 

siderations of educational aims and educational values ; 
and hence, whether this tendency should be yielded to, 
and even deliberately encouraged ; or whether it is a 
pernicious tendency subversive of the real interests of 
the pupils, and hence, deserves to be resisted and 
overcome. 

In the consideration of this question it will be nec- 
essary to deal with at least two educational common- 
places, namely, the whole aim of education, and the 
teacher's attitude toward his profession, which involves 
a conscious recognition of that aim. I do not hesitate 
to dwell on these commonplaces, because they are 
by no means commonplaces of practice as they are of 
theory; moreover, a restatement of them in order to 
recognize their importance by bringing to light their 
effect on the future of every human being subjected 
to their influence cannot be superfluous. Our profes- 
sional life is largely a repetition of commonplaces 
whose significance we are in danger of losing. To 
seize this significance rationalizes endeavor, and hence, 
restores the enthusiasm, inspiration, and guidance for 
fresh effort that is born of a renewed insight. 

I have elsewhere pointed out how rare it is to find 
teachers whose work is determined by conscious aims, 
and consequently how narrow is the professional hori- 
zon of most of them. I shall not soon forget the 
surprise with which an intelligent teacher said to 
me, not long ago, **An aim! I have no aim in teach- 



30 A RECENT TENDENCY IN 

ing ; that is a new idea ! " and another New England 
teacher, one of the first in his profession, said, in 
reply to my statement that every teacher's purpose 
must determine the nature and quality of his work, 
" I have no purpose in teaching Astronomy ; I don't 
know why I teach it!" These teachers did not, of 
course, represent themselves quite .fairly. But they 
did mean, that beyond the immediate object of induc- 
ing their pupils to learn their daily lessons in Algebra, 
and Latin, and Astronomy, they had no conscious pur- 
poses by which their whole activity as teachers was 
determined; and specifically, that the choice of these 
subjects as fit subject-matter of instruction was no con- 
cern of theirs ; they taught these subjects as best they 
could, because those subjects were in the course of 
study which was like other courses of study, or because 
those subjects were required for admission to college. 

It seems necessary, then, to remind ourselves that 
programmes or courses of study are not divine revela- 
tions deserving of implicit adherence. On the con- 
trary, they sometimes suggest a very different origin. 
But whatever the wisdom or unwisdom of their content 
and form, it is obvious that programmes or courses of 
study are not an end in themselves, but a means to an 
end. They involve, as intimated above, the whole aim 
of education, and the teacher's attitude toward that aim. 

The aim of education is and always will be " prepa- 
ration for complete living." Preparation for complete 



SECONDARY EDUCATION EXAMINED 31 

living means the acquisition of knowledge drawn from 
the two fields of all human activity — man and his ex- 
perience and achievements^ and external nature ; and 
training to intelligent and productive activity in the 
use of this knowledge, and to proper enjoyment of it. 
In the actual work of education we commonly divide 
this preparation into three periods — primary, second- 
ary, and higher education. We are in this chapter 
concerned with the first two. Too commonly we have 
attached a wrong significance to this division. Too 
often it has been regarded merely as a suitable strati- 
fication of our school system with appropriate subdivi- 
sions in each stratum, for the convenient handling of 
masses of children and youth for periodic examination 
and transfer from one stratum to another. 

For this mechanical conception a more intelligent 
one is, however, gaining acceptance ; namely, that 
this preparation, though roughly divisible into peri- 
ods, is an organic process with an unbroken sequence 
corresponding to the child's advancing mental, moral, 
and physical development from one end of his school 
life to the other. This conception naturally leads to 
a consideration of aims, means, and methods appropri- 
ate to different stages of the work, and to the recogni- 
tion that aims, means, and methods of one sort may 
not cease abruptly at any period for totally different 
ones, but that the aims to be achieved, the means to 
be employed, and the methods used at one stage must 



32 A RECENT TENDENCY IN 

merge into the aims, means, and methods appropriate 
to a later stage. We may, however, for purposes of 
discussion, separate the chief ends to be accomplished 
during these stages from each other, in order to point 
out how they necessarily determine the school pro- 
grammes and the teacher's conception of his work. 

The stage of primary or elementary education may 
appropriately be called the stage of nutrition. In that 
stage life is full of wonders. Everything is yet to be 
discovered. The mind of the child is to be opened and 
the world is to be let in. The teacher is a veritable 
magician under whose guidance the pupil is to experi- 
ence more and far greater delights than those of myth 
or fairy land, and the treasures discovered are to be his 
own if he will but exert himself to seize them. The 
wonderful beauty and structure of organic and inor- 
ganic forms ; the marvellous laws of nature ; the hint 
of system in number and form ; some appreciation of 
grandeur and beauty in landscape, and sea, and sky; 
the secrets of life as revealed in the form, the structure, 
the life history, and especially the habits of animals 
and plants ; these are some of the treasures which the 
world offers him, and which the teacher helps him to 
make his own. Nor is the story of man less attrac- 
tive at this age than the story of nature. The myths 
of early days, the heroes of legend, and later the 
heroes of history, not sovereigns and mere war heroes 
mainly, but chiefly the men and women who are re- 



SECONDARY EDUCATION EXAMINED 33 

membered with affection and respect, for the good, the 
true, or the beautiful they have wrought; the story 
of the gradual rise of popular liberty and of national 
stability, so far as these lie within the comprehension 
of the child ; the delights of poetry and of romance — 
the literature of his own and other tongues that thrills 
him with pleasure and feeds his young imagination with 
pure and noble ideals — all these sources of inspira- 
tion and guidance the teacher brings within his reach. 
The artists too, the musician, the painter, the engraver, 
and the sculptor are called upon to contribute their 
share to the enrichment of his young life with the 
purest pleasures. Meanwhile under the teacher's guid- 
ance the pupil's tongue and hand are not idle. He 
learns to employ both in acquiring and in giving ex- 
pression to the ideas he has gained. Through oral and 
written speech, through drawing, and through various 
forms of manual construction, he learns his power over 
his acquisitions, and, while heightening his feeling of 
intellectual achievement, puts into permanent form 
the thoughts he has had, or the forms which he has 
conceived. 

The teacher who looks upon education as the process 
which thus begins to reveal the world of nature and the 
world of man to his pupil, who regards himself as the 
pupil's guide and interpreter, will keenly feel, back of 
the commonplaces of his routine, both the responsibili- 
ties and the privileges of his vocation. ** He will then 



34 A RECENT TENDENCY IN 

say of his own accord," says Herbart, "that not he but 
the whole power of what humanity has felt, experi- 
enced, and thought, is the true and right educator, to 
which the boy is entitled, and that the teacher is given 
to him merely that he may help by an intelligent in- 
terpretation and elevating companionship. Thus to 
present the whole treasure of accumulated research in 
a concentrated form to the youthful generation is the 
highest service which mankind at any period of its 
existence can render to its successors, be it as teaching 
or as warning." In other words, the true teacher will 
realize that the intellectual, moral, and social atmos- 
phere which he creates is the medium of the pupil's 
dawning intellectual and spiritual life. To economize 
time and energy, to make the most of native endow- 
ments, to stimulate, to guide, restrain, encourage the 
pupil's own activity with fine feeling and good sense, 
such is the exalted function of the elementary teacher 
— such must be his aim. 

It need hardly be said that such an aim deter- 
mines a totally different activity from that in which 
the teacher merely sets a task for the pupil to per- 
form, and then determines whether the pupil has or 
has not performed it. Such an aim will induce the 
teacher so to deal with his subject and his pupil that, 
although the details of the knowledge presented may 
be forgotten, the memory of the charm of its novel- 
ties and of its beauties skilfully revealed, of the intel- 



SECONDARY EDUCATION EXAMINED 35 

lectual conquests that it afforded, of the wonderful 
relations between the different parts of the whole field 
of knowledge which were discovered, of its availabil- 
ity for the service or for the pleasures of men, — in 
a word, the many-sided interest which was developed 
in knowledge and in the varied activities of which 
a human being is capable will remain as a permanent 
mental possession. 

As yet, however, the mind of the child has only 
been aroused. It has been touched by life in its 
manifold forms, and it thrills and pulsates with its 
own awakening. This has been the purpose, and 
should be the result, of primary education. An or- 
derly presentation of the whole field of knowledge in 
its elements has nourished the child's growing mind, 
has called into activity his varied powers, and has 
given him glimpses of fresh fields to explore and 
greater conquests to achieve beyond. He eagerly 
seizes on every subject, and enters with zest on every 
fresh undertaking. 

But children are, after all, very unstable creatures. 
Much of the knowledge and power and interest of 
the earlier years is superficial and transitory. The 
random interest, the restless activity, the manifold 
impulses of this early stage are still to be organized 
and controlled. Alertness must not be sacrificed, but 
interest must glow steadily ; choice and action must 
become deliberate. Stability and concentration must 



36 A RECENT TENDENCY IN 

come to characterize the youth's mental life as well 
as alertness and activity. 

Now, habitual alertness, stability, and vigorous ac- 
tivity are sure to follow the adaptation of work to 
individual interests. These individual interests begin 
to emerge as soon as the pupil's acquisitions arrange 
themselves into separate classes. As these classes 
of acquisitions and pursuits diverge more and more, 
each of them assumes marked peculiarities. The 
youth finds himself no longer attracted by every sug- 
gested activity, but certain kinds of knowledge and 
certain forms of activity have a charm for him which 
other kinds of knowledge and other forms of activity 
do not possess. The field of knowledge has become 
an array of different subjects, each of which has its 
own peculiar form and content, and its own peculiar 
mode of treatment. He feels himself, unconsciously 
at first, but with rapidly growing consciousness, per- 
manently attracted by some subjects, and by some 
forms of activity; while, similarly, other subjects or 
other activities are indifferent or even distasteful to 
him. Moreover, it is no longer possible for him to 
compass the whole field of knowledge after it has 
separated into many distinct subjects, even if he were 
impelled to do so. This gradual selective or elective 
action of the pupil's mind is as important as it is 
natural. It marks the stage during which the pupil 
emerges from early childhood into later childhood 



SECONDARY EDUCATION EXAMINED 37 

and youth. It deserves the most careful study. When 
well marked and persistent, it shows that primary edu- 
cation has accomplished its purpose. It has made the 
pupil responsive to the varied interests of life. It 
should, therefore, be welcomed and facilitated, but also 
guided and directed through wise restrictions. 

It deserves to be facilitated because all real activ- 
ity on which growth depends, as contrasted with mere 
passive receptivity, depends on interest. From this 
time forward, therefore, the pupil's real effort will be 
reserved for his preferences. If these preferences 
are discovered and justly regarded in his choice of 
work, he may through them develop dominant groups 
of ideas, to which all other acquisitions are referred, 
and through which all other acquisitions are inter- 
preted — become significant. Through these domi- 
nant groups of ideas the organization of his knowledge 
and thorough achievement are natural and inevitable. 
Without them, desultory effort, sporadic exertion, half 
achievement, are sure to determine the nature and 
quality of his work. The intellectual flabbiness and 
uncertainty, the want of enthusiasm and pleasure in 
knowledge and the pursuit of knowledge, too often 
shown by many a high-school pupil, and by too many 
high-school graduates, illustrate what is meant. 

The pursuit of work in accordance with the pupil's 
preferences ought, therefore, to be facilitated ; in order 
that, und^er the teacher's guidance, the real quality 



38 A RECENT TENDENCY IN 

and temper of the pupil's mind may be discovered, 
and that on the basis of this discovery he may be led 
to mental stability, habitual alertness, and vigorous 
activity. But while the preferences of the pupil thus 
need to be facilitated, it is also apparent that they 
should be guided and restricted with the greatest care. 
Some of the preferences shown by a pupil are sure to 
be superficial and transitory. Care must, therefore, 
be exercised that caprice, or a chance interest, may 
not narrow the range of the pupil's intellectual life. 
Moreover, the power to attend to the immediately 
uninteresting for the sake of reaching a remoter in- 
terest has to be developed, and hence the pupil may, 
during the stage under consideration, be wisely re- 
quired to attend to subjects, and to exert himself, for 
a suitable time, in ways and at times which are, in 
themselves, unattractive or even irksome to him. 
Again, subjects needed for ethical and social enlight- 
enment on the one hand, and for an appreciative un- 
derstanding of nature on the other, must not be lightly 
set aside nor easily abandoned. Further, intensive- 
ness and continuity in the pursuit of individual sub- 
jects beyond their barest rudiments and of activities 
beyond their beginnings are essential to the develop- 
ment of power. Such intensiveness and continuity only 
can determine whether a pupil has a real or merely a 
transitory or illusory interest in given subjects. But, 
before long, every subject of instruction and every 



SECONDARY EDUCATION EXAMINED 39 

form of activity, in itself, even when preferred by the 
pupil, affords such training; and, consequently, as the 
pupil's real tastes appear they can be yielded to more 
and more to his own great advantage. 

For these reasons the pupil's work in accordance 
with his preferences should be carefully guided and 
restricted. All this requires much intelligent experi- 
menting. Without such experimenting there is sure 
to be much waste of time and energy, and there may 
be positive retrogression. Besides it must not be over- 
looked that bad teaching may produce precisely the 
same result as uninteresting subject-matter. Hence, in 
addition to the necessity of a properly guarded choice 
among the different subjects, there is also the inciden- 
tal implied necessity of a choice among the different 
teachers. The period for this experimentation is the 
period covered by secondary education, say from the 
pupil's eleventh or twelfth to his eighteenth or twen- 
tieth year. The pupil's secondary education, there- 
fore, begins before he completes his (present) gram- 
mar-school course and continues throughout the entire 
high-school period. 

During this period, then, there is laid upon the 
teacher, in addition to the duties' described above in 
connection with the considerations on elementary edu- 
cation, the difficult task of wisely tising the course of 
study as a means of discovering the pupil and leading 
him to self -rev elation. 



40 A RECENT TENDENCY IN 

To make such a discovery and revelation possible, 
flexible programmes with a large range of electives 
are necessary. Without such programmes it is use- 
less to expect spontaneous effort. Under compulsion 
pupils respond to external demands only; they know 
little of the joy of achievement, and of the pleasures 
of intellectual activity in general.. Under compulsion 
the pupil is prevented from experimenting, and with- 
out experimenting it is impossible for him or for 
any one else to know what he can and what he can- 
not do; what he enjoys and what is distasteful to 
him. Of course, as has been said already, an indis- 
criminate or random choosing of certain subjects and 
corresponding neglect of certain others should not be 
permitted ; to surrender the pupil to his own caprice 
is as bad as to compel him to adhere to an externally 
imposed regime. But without the opportunity to 
choose for himself as wisely as he can, he never can 
develop independence of thought and action, moral 
poise, and vigor. 

To develop habits of thorough acquisition, each 
subject, or group of closely related subjects, once un- 
dertaken, if found adapted to the pupil, should be pur- 
sued long enough and intensively enough to demand 
serious attention. It does not require much exertion, 
and it is no real test of interest or power, to skim the 
surface of a subject with avidity. But to deal with it 
intensively, to penetrate willingly into its resources and 



SECONDARY EDUCATION EXAMINED 41 

master its difficulties, calls for real interest and genuine 
application. And such pursuit of the subjects or 
groups of subjects will make them substantially equal 
so far as the development of intellectual habits is 
concerned ; it will accordingly establish their claim to 
equal dignity and educational value. 

The opportunities required for such purpose will be 
adequately provided, first, when each secondary school 
determines the amount of instruction which it is pre- 
pared to offer in each subject for each year, and then re- 
gards the tabulation of this instruction or the so-called 
"courses of study" not as mandatory programmes, 
but, with certain necessary restrictions in regard to 
amount, sequence, and continuity, as suggestive sched- 
ules ; and, second, when it may also be justly said of 
those schools that the teachers in them are efficient, 
kindly, and just; and that the general atmosphere 
prevailing there is inspiring and refining. Efficient, 
kindly, and just teachers will be found when the 
community demands them, and is ready to pay for 
and appreciate them. The responsibility for securing 
such teachers for the secondary schools rests on the 
superintendents and principals. 

The fear is sometimes expressed that when pupils 
are free to choose their studies, they will choose only 
the easier ones and neglect those requiring strenuous 
application. But there is really little danger of such a 
perversion of opportunity; because, first, every elective 



42 A RECENT TENDENCY EXAMINED 

course for secondary schools should be administered 
with due regard to the necessary restrictions just 
mentioned; and, second, experience has already shown 
that most young people, like most adults, though some- 
times inclined, at first, to choose the easier rather 
than the better way when traditional restraints have 
been removed, generally learn, under freedom, to dis- 
criminate between illusory and permanent benefits, and 
deliberately choose what they believe to be best irre- 
spective of other considerations. 

Here, then, we have the answer to the question I 
proposed. The present tendency, traced in the begin- 
ning of this paper, toward arranging high-school pro- 
grammes in parallel courses of study, one of them 
with a wide range of electives throughout, is, so far 
as it goes, in harmony with sound educational princi- 
ples, and hence, with the real interests of the pupils ; 
it should, therefore, be deliberately encouraged. 



Ill 



ATTEMPTED IMPROVEMENTS IN 
THE COURSE OF STUDY 



Ill 



ATTEMPTED IMPROVEMENTS IN 
THE COURSE OF STUDY 

During the last thirty years education in this coun- 
try has been rapidly acquiring a new significance- 
It has been emerging from the sphere of mechanical 
routine into the sphere of rationalized endeavor. Dur- 
ing these thirty years the three perennial problems of 
all progress in school education have emerged into 
prominence ; and of late we have learned what promises 
to be the most fruitful method ever devised for the solu- 
tion of these problems. These problems are : (i) How 
to improve the course of study for all grades ; (2) How 
to improve the teaching in all grades; (3) How to 
improve the organization and administration of city 
school systems; and the method which we have learned 
and through which we may confidently hope to reach 
more and more satisfactory solutions of these problems 
is the method of cooperation. 

These three problems are discussed by the Com- 
mittee of Ten and the Committee of Fifteen of the 
National Educational Association; and the reports of 

45 



46 ATTEMPTED IMPROVEMENTS IN 

these committees as well as the organization and work 
of the several associations of colleges and prepara- 
tory schools, together with the more recent special 
conferences of school and college men held for the 
consideration of questions affecting the interests of 
both secondary and higher education, bear important 
testimony to the great value of the .method of coopera- 
tive effort in seeking the solution of educational prob- 
lems. Quite recently a new cooperative organization, 
destined, I believe, to be of great value and influence 
in the future, has appeared. This is the so-called 
Education Society, composed chiefly of persons not 
teachers, but organized for the purpose of securing 
the intelligent and sympathetic cooperation of the 
community and the teachers, both in the serious en- 
deavor to solve educational problems, and in the pro- 
motion of wise experiments with promising solutions 
as fast as they are offered. Setting aside, for the 
present, other interesting and important considera- 
tions, I purpose to consider one of the educational 
problems to which reference has been made, namely, 
How to improve the course of study. 

Improvements in the course of study can have 
reference to only two features ; namely, the nature 
of the subject-matter and the suitable arrangement 
of that subject-matter. Let us, therefore, briefly re- 
view the course of study as it was and is, in order 
that we may justly appreciate the attempted improve- 



THE COURSE OF STUDY 47 

merits now in process of adoption throughout the 
country. 

Once it was assumed that all knowledge was locked 
up in books ; at the same time it was assumed that 
all knowledge (book knowledge) was power. Hence 
all intellectual development meant the mastery of 
books. " To put a child to his book " was accordingly 
the phrase which described the aim and processes 
of elementary education. Or, in other words, the aim 
was to enable the child to read, write, and cipher in 
order that he might possess himself of the contents 
of books. Until a command of written and printed 
speech and facility in numerical operations were 
secured, it was assumed that nothing else could be 
learned. This exaggerated opinion of the importance 
of the fundamental school arts as the keys to all knowl- 
edge naturally concentrated attention on the arts 
themselves for many years of the course. They were, 
therefore, almost universally regarded as the most 
important subjects during the whole eight or nine 
years of the elementary-school course of study. 

Not many years ago, therefore, it was still quite 
generally true that the elementary-school course of 
study — the pre-high-school course — could be described 
as chiefly a course of study in the school arts, read- 
ing, writing, arithmetic, and English grammar, together 
with book geography, and a little United States history. 
It was still quite generally true that the school seemed 



48 ATTEMPTED IMPROVEMENTS IN 

to be divorced from life. It had its own routine, which 
seemed to be designed for keeping boys and girls 
busy about tasks the significance of which was only 
dimly perceived, and sometimes, being neither real nor 
apparent, was not perceived at all. The pupils could 
read, but not having experienced the pleasure and 
profit to be derived from what was worth reading, 
most of them did not read ; they could cipher, but as 
they found no use for most of the arithmetical skill 
they had spent so long a time in acquiring, they soon 
forgot it ; they had learned and could locate geographi- 
cal names on a map, and had committed to memory 
a number of detached groups of statistics relating to 
area, population, and products ; but most of this geo- 
graphical information was found to be useless, both 
in practical affairs and as a means of further acquisi- 
tion, and it, like most of the arithmetic, soon passed 
into oblivion. The enumeration of dates and unrelated 
events that made up a fragmentary study of United 
States history soon went the way of the geography, 
and for a like reason. The grammar, which had 
promised to teach how to speak and write the Eng- 
lish language correctly, had somehow been found to 
develop little significance, and even when understood, 
its rules seemed (as they really were) almost wholly 
superfluous to young children whose only acquaint- 
ance with the form and structure of language was 
derived from the mother-tongue. Consequently the 



THE COURSE OF STUDY 49 

grammar, like most of the arithmetic, geography, and 
history, was, ere long, consigned to the intellectual 
lumber-room where moth and rust soon did their 
work; and within a few years very little was left of 
all that had been so painfully acquired. 

It was, therefore, quite generally true that the total 
permanent result of the first eight or nine years of the 
pupil's school life was the ability to read, but not the 
reading habit; the ability to spell and write words, 
but no power of expression with the pen ; a varying 
ability to add, subtract, multiply, and divide simple 
numbers, integral and fractional, but much uncer- 
tainty in all other arithmetical operations ; some 
fragmentary book knowledge of names and places of 
our own country and of foreign countries; and some 
scrappy information relating to the history of the 
United States. 

Most pupils had derived few permanent interests 
from these first eight or nine years of school life, 
and those who left school without entering the high 
school very naturally regarded what they had learned 
of intellectual pursuits as typical of intellectual inter- 
ests in general, and felt for them little respect and 
less regard. Inasmuch as the great majority of the 
community is composed of those who have not con- 
tinued their school life beyond the grammar school, 
it is evident that, for the great majority of the com- 
munity, education had been only an incident, and not. 



50 ATTEMPTED IMPROVEMENTS IN 

as it should be, a great leavening intellectual, moral, 
and social force. 

Another defect of this barren elementary course 
of study was to create a gap between " the grades " 
and the high school. The pursuit of literature, art, 
natural science, foreign languages was, usually, rigor- 
ously excluded from " the grades " ; and the pupil, on 
entering the high school, found himself face to face 
with a bewildering number of conceptions wholly new 
to him, and consequently often as uninteresting and 
as devoid of significance as the drill of his grammar- 
school period. At the same time this total diversity 
in aims and occupations of the lower grades and the 
high school caused, and still causes, the teachers of 
the high school, almost universally, to regard them- 
selves as having no concern with the pupil's earlier 
school career ; and so, both on account of the course 
of study and the high-school teachers' faulty concep- 
tion of their duty to the pupil, an unnatural obstruc- 
tion to the pupil's steady progress in knowledge and 
power resulted; an obstruction very appropriately de- 
scribed as a gap between the lower grades and the 
high school. 

The description just given of the course of study 
with its characteristic gap is no longer generally 
applicable to existing courses ; although the old 
course of study has, in many instances, even yet 
been modified but little, and the characteristic gap 



THE COURSE OF STUDY 5 1 

referred to still exists in many city school systems, 
together with the faulty conception, already referred 
to, which many high-school teachers have of the rela- 
tion of the high school to the pupil's earlier career. 
This faulty conception is traceable, of course, to the 
fact that most secondary-school teachers now in ser- 
vice have never studied their profession as such, 
either before entering on their work or subsequently. 

The inadequacy and inappropriateness of the old 
course of study both in content (subject-matter) and 
in form (organization) have been of late quite generally 
recognized. We have been for some time, and are 
now, occupied in the endeavor to enrich its content 
and remodel its form in accordance with the insight 
we have gained. Everywhere, throughout the length 
and breadth of the land, courses of study are under 
revision. They are unstable to the last degree. 
There is well-nigh educational chaos. But, decidedly, 
it is not a discouraging confusion. There is still, 
and there always will be, just as there always has 
been, much blind imitation, but there is also much 
intelligent planning and deliberate experimentation. 
More and more we are endeavoring to modify our 
courses of study in accordance with more and more 
clearly defined principles. 

Hitherto we have attempted two quite different 
modes of enriching the course of study and of bridg- 
ing the gap between elementary and secondary edu- 



52 ATTEMPTED IMPROVEMENTS IN 

cation. By the first mode we have inserted certain 
subjects, formerly regarded as high-school subjects, 
— algebra, geometry, natural science, foreign lan- 
guages, — into the later years of the elementary 
course of study without attempting any important 
modification of the work of the earlier years. Expe- 
rience has already shown, I think, that this mode of 
enriching the course of study marks only a transi- 
tional stage of development, and does not afford a 
permanent basis for improvement. It has, to be 
sure, brought about a desirable more or less extensive 
curtailment of the book arithmetic, geography, and 
English grammar ; but it has also resulted in con- 
gested courses of study and the corresponding super- 
ficial work. It has, moreover, sometimes resulted in 
two different and opposite errors in adaptation. 
Sometimes the course of study, thus enriched, has 
been too difficult, because the new subjects were 
introduced as abruptly as they had formerly been 
presented to the pupil in the high school. For 
example, physics has been introduced as purely 
quantitative work (exact weighing, measuring, and 
computing) ; geometry and algebra as demonstrative 
and abstract mathematical sciences; foreign languages 
through the same grammatical study in kind and 
degree, if not in amount, that was appropriate only 
to a later stage of the pupil's development. The 
effect of such early introduction of science and 



THE COURSE OF STUDY 53 

foreign-language study, although marking an improve- 
ment on the older barren and formal work, has too 
often been nearly as unproductive as the old course 
of study, because the pupil has not been properly 
prepared for it by earlier, qualitative (observational) 
work — i.e. by nature study, concrete geometry, the 
simpler processes and applications of algebra in con- 
nection with arithmetic, and an easy introduction to 
Latin through at least one modern language. 

On the other hand, this form of enrichment has 
sometimes been too easy to hold the interest and pro- 
gressively challenge the capacity of pupils in the 
later years of their grammar-school course by mak- 
ing it purely qualitative (observational and concrete); 
and this was, of course, because the earlier observa- 
tional, concrete, and simpler work had not been 
done when it should have been done. Children have 
thus often failed to realize an appropriate develop- 
ment of knowledge and power in both cases, because 
the course was not properly adapted from the begin- 
ning to their constantly expanding interests and 
growing capacities. It was apparent, therefore, that 
what was needed was not an enrichment of the 
course of study by merely inserting certain new sub- 
jects into the later years of the grammar-school 
course and making room for these subjects by cut- 
ting out certain details of other subjects already 
found there. What was needed was an enrichment 



54 ATTEMPTED IMPROVEMENTS IN 

involving a total revision of the course from the 
beginning. 

And this has been attempted by the second mode of 
improving the course of study to which reference has 
been made. This second mode of enriching or improv- 
ing the course of study is, accordingly, such a revision 
of the entire course as would make the pupil's work, 
from the beginning, a revelation of the world in which 
he lives and of his own relation to it, including his 
duties and his privileges. Instead of an abrupt intro- 
duction to totally new subjects and processes the pupil 
is led to approach them gradually. For example, he 
is led, on the one hand, through concrete geometry and 
simple applications of algebraic symbols and processes 
in connection with his work in arithmetic, to mathe- 
matical science (geometry and algebra); and through 
nature study to physical and biological science (physics, 
chemistry, physiography, astronomy, botany, zoology); 
and, on the other hand, he is led to history and litera- 
ture through fable, myth, story, and biography; and 
to foreign language through simple language exercises 
that reveal to him simultaneously the significance of 
the science of grammar as a guide to the study of his 
mother-tongue and as an instrument in foreign-language 
acquisition. At the same time we are beginning to 
understand the value of art and manual training both 
for educational and industrial purposes, and are there- 
fore endeavoring to make the revised course of study 



THE COURSE OF STUDY 55 

provide appropriate opportunities for training in the 
elements of the fine arts and of the mechanic arts as 
well. That is to say, we are endeavoring, through this 
second mode of enrichment, to make the course of study- 
serve, continuously and progressively, the pupil's ex- 
panding interests and powers throughout his entire 
school career. We are seeking, through the improved 
course of study, to prepare him for a life of usefulness 
and happiness by adapting him, first of all, to the civili- 
zation into which he is born ; and at the same time, if 
his circumstances permit, to prepare him to attain 
the fullest self-realization through further study, on 
the foundation already laid. 

This second conception of the course of study, there- 
fore, declines to recognize two wholly distinct classes 
of subjects, each of which is to be pursued by itself, 
and at times widely apart; namely, the school arts 
appropriate to primary- and grammar-school education ; 
and science, history, literature, foreign language, fine 
art, manual training, appropriate only to high-school 
education. Such a course of study provides the neces- 
sary instruction in the school arts, but does not exag- 
gerate their importance, and provides also for the 
appropriate pursuit of the different subjects of instruc- 
tion as soon as the pupil is ready for them; even 
though, for convenience in organization and manage- 
ment, we may continue to group our pupils in grammar 
schools and high schools. When this revision and 



56 ATTEMPTED IMPROVEMENTS IN 

corresponding enrichment of the course of study have 
become estabHshed, there will be no sudden transition 
from "the grades" to the high school; but the last 
years of the course — four, five, or six, as the case may 
be — will merely promote the pupil's steady progress 
in the knowledge and power already acquired. The 
last four years will no longer be " exclusively reserved 
for a first acquaintance with subjects that should have 
been commenced much earlier, but each subject will 
find appropriate and sufficiently early recognition and 
suitable time allotment. Moreover, through it all 
teachers, the high-school teachers included, will learn 
— some of them have learned it already — how impor- 
tant it is that the high school should be closely articu- 
lated to the lower grades, and how essential it is to the 
highest efficiency of teachers that they should possess 
a sympathetic and discriminating insight into the 
pupil's entire educational career from one end of his 
school life to the other. 

The second mode of improving the course of study 
will, therefore, also bridge the gap between elementary 
and secondary education in a way quite impossible 
with the first mode. It is gradually winning its way 
into general acceptance, and to it we may look hope- 
fully for steady improvement in the schools of the 
future. 

While these changes have been going on in the 
elementary or pre-high-school course of study, equally 



THE COURSE OF STUDY 57 

important and interesting changes of aim have been 
in progress in the secondary or high-school course of 
study. It was pointed out in the last chapter that, 
not many years ago, the high-school programme con- 
sisted of 

A single course of study, or at most of two courses of study, 
which the pupil was obliged to pursue, as laid down, if he 
desired to graduate and obtain the diploma of the school. 
The substance of the preferred course of study was Latin, 
Greek, and mathematics. The programme usually comprised 
also a smattering of general history, including the history of 
English literature, the writing of a few English essays or " com- 
positions," and occasionally political economy, and " mental 
science." This was the classical course, always pursued by 
those pupils who were going to college ; and to it most other 
pupils possessing or, at least, claiming to possess social and 
intellectual superiority, also devoted themselves. These pupils 
thus formed the fortunate circle of the intellectual and social 
elite; and by means of the classical course those pupils who 
were not yet of this fortunate circle sought to gain admis- 
sion to it. 

The other course was either like the classical course with 
the Greek left out, and French or German substituted in its 
place ; or it was a course in which science and modern 
languages replaced both Latin and Greek. In the latter case, 
i.e. when both Latin and Greek were omitted, their places 
were often taken by an ill-assorted aggregate of subjects 
treated rather briefly, and called " English branches." Be- 
cause of the usually scrappy character of the studies substi- 
tuted for the classics, and because of the inferior instruction 
often given in these substituted subjects, the non-classical 



58 ATTEMPTED^ IMPROVEMENTS IN 

course was, at first, and for a long time afterward, almost 
always in fact, as always in reputation, inferior to the classical 
course. It was intended for those pupils who had no hope 
of going to college, for those who, presumably, had no " literary 
aspirations " or had no reasonable expectation of rising above 
their present social position, and for the hopelessly dull.^ 

Both of these courses of study were defective. The 
obvious defects of the non-classical course need not be 
dwelt upon. But the classical course, as a universal 
type of what the best secondary-school or high-school 
course should be for all pupils, was equally, although 
differently, defective. Its content and form were of 
course determined by the requirements for admission 
to college, of which, even at Harvard College until a 
very short time ago, the most important subjects were 
Latin, Greek, and mathematics. 

This might answer for pupils who were going to 
college. Such pupils would, in due time, have an 
opportunity to study their mother tongue, to some 
extent at least; to learn one or more modern foreign 
languages ; to gain some acquaintance with history, 
natural science, and other subjects useful, interesting, 
and important to educated persons living in the nine- 
teenth century. But what of those pupils who did 
not go to college ; whose school life terminated on 
completion of the high-school course of study ? In 
estimating the value of the classical course of study 

1 Page 23. 



THE COURSE OF STUDY 59 

in high schools for all pupils, one must bear in mind 
not only what the pupils got but also what they did 
not get. 

This course aimed to furnish an introduction to the 
literatures of ancient Greece and Rome and hence to 
the historical culture of the race ; and in so far as this 
introduction was actually achieved, the result was, of 
course, proportionally valuable. But it is perfectly 
well known that, too often, the classical languages 
failed to impress the pupils as literature; these lan- 
guages served, too often, mainly as a source of gram- 
matical exercises, because of the way in which they 
were taught ; and even when well taught, it could rarely 
happen that any literary appreciation, to say nothing 
of enthusiasm, could be developed for either Greek or 
Latin in young people from fourteen or fifteen to 
eighteen or nineteen years of age, attacking these lan- 
guages for the first time, and without any previous 
study of a foreign language. These languages, to- 
gether with mathematics, did however invariably con- 
sume so much of the pupil's time for study that all 
other subjects, including the mother-tongue, were neces- 
sarily relegated to a very subordinate place. When 
we reflect that this meant a high-school education with- 
out any study of modern languages, without science, 
without English literature, without any history except 
an introduction to the history of Greece and Rome, 
without any introduction to the fine arts, and, of course, 



6o ATTEMPTED IMPROVEMENTS IN 

without any opportunity for manual training, we can 
appreciate how inadequately equipped for the thought 
and activities of the nineteenth century those pupils 
were who graduated from the classical course of study 
in the public high school or the academy, and pursued 
their studies no further; how inadequately equipped 
they were "for life," in spite of the fact that many 
of them had pursued diligently and successfully the 
work which had been given them to do. 

Such defects have been more and more clearly recog- 
nized during the recent past, and as a consequence the 
original single unsatisfactory non-classical course has 
developed into a number of parallel courses, partly or 
wholly non-classical, each of which aims to meet the 
various needs of nineteenth-century civilization. At the 
same time the content and form of these non-classical 
courses has steadily improved, and what is even more 
important, the teaching in them has also improved, 
until, to-day, although the classical course, itself modi- 
fied not a little in response to modern demands, is still 
regarded by many as the superior course, it is never- 
theless true that the non-classical courses are rapidly 
gaining in intrinsic quality as well as in the public esti- 
mation, so that they are coming to be regarded as more 
and more nearly equal or even superior in value and 
dignity to the traditional classical course. 

The efforts to improve the secondary or high-school 
course of study, like the corresponding efforts for the 



THE COURSE OF STUDY 6 1 

improvement of the grammar-school course of study, 
have therefore been directed to an enlargement of its 
scope (content) and such modification of its form as 
would best adapt it to modern needs. In bringing 
about these very desirable changes in the high-school 
course of study the West has rendered important ser- 
vice. In those newer regions traditions have had less 
weight in determining educational practice, and the 
non-classical high-school courses have thrived there 
especially. 

A very important incidental gain, traceable largely to 
these modifications in the high-school course of study 
made in response to external demands, deserves to be 
noted here. These modifications have had much to do 
with insuring the permanence of the public high school 
as an integral part of our public school systems. I 
think it is just to say that the persistent adherence to 
the classical course of study, as the only valuable course 
for secondary schools, was the fact that lent greatest 
strength to the opponents of the high school in the days 
when the public were not so willing to acknowledge as 
they are to-day that the high school belongs of right to 
our public school systems. The course of study was 
obviously designed only for those pupils who were 
going to college, and the majority of the people found 
in it little indication of helpfulness to their children for 
either practical or educational purposes. That these 
people were ready to attack the support of the high 



62 ATTEMPTED IMPROVEMENTS IN 

school is thus easily understood. With the modifica- 
tions in the scope and organization of high-school work 
that have been described these attacks have ceased. 
At the present time the public high school may justly 
be said to be firmly established throughout the country. 

Another important modification is gradually finding 
recognition in our secondary-school programmes. Not 
only may the pupil choose one of several courses of 
study offered to him in every considerable high school, 
but choices are permitted within these courses, and 
there are schools — and the number of such schools is 
increasing — in which at least one course of study, the 
"general course," which is not determined by college 
admission requirements, is largely elective, throughout. 
That is to say, not only does the modern high school 
aim to provide an introduction to the culture and train- 
ing demanded by modern life, but in so doing it seeks 
also to adapt its opportunities and demands to the tastes 
and capacities of individuals. The importance of this 
change in our secondary-school opportunities it is diffi- 
cult to overrate. 

It is the result of a clear recognition of the fact that 
the emergence of individual tastes and capacities is 
as important as it is natural. Achievement is most 
productive when it is in accordance with interest and 
capacity, and the ability to choose wisely can only be 
developed by permitting the youth to choose repeatedly, 
under direction, as wisely as he can. 



THE COURSE OF STUDY 63 

Let me not be misunderstood. I would not have 
a child twelve or thirteen years old freely choose his 
own course of study. But if the pupil has been prop- 
erly trained up to his thirteenth year, he is then en- 
titled to have his preferences considered in the choice 
which his parents and teachers permit him to make. 
As he grows older, his ability to choose wisely should 
be deliberately cultivated, so that usually by the time 
he has completed his secondary-school course — rarely 
before that time — he may be prepared to choose his 
further studies without restrictions. A youth of eigh- 
teen or nineteen, who has been learning to choose — 
who has had training in foresight — for five or six 
years, is not likely to abuse his privileges, nor is he 
likely to be ignorant of the importance of wise coun- 
sel nor to wish to dispense with it. 

I maintain, therefore, that we are coming to see 
that one of the important functions of the high school 
is to facilitate the discovery and development of in- 
dividual interests and capacities, and that this function 
should hereafter be borne in mind while we endeavor, 
as we should, to preserve a due balance between the 
exercise of all the pupil's powers — between the pur- 
suit of knowledge needed for moral and social en- 
lightenment and the cultivation of a rich emotional 
nature on the one hand, and for an appreciative 
understanding of nature on the other. At the same 
time we have learned, through the more or less ra- 



64 ATTEMPTED IMPROVEMENTS IN 

tional demands of teachers, and of parents and pupils, 
to attach due importance to the training of the hand 
and to training for a normally developed and vigorous 
body. 

From the foregoing discussion, I think we may con- 
clude that whatever dissatisfaction we may feel with 
courses of study as they now are, our attempts to 
improve the course of study as it was have led us to 
an improved conception of our entire educational en- 
deavor. This conception, I believe, is fairly interpreted 
in the following statement of the aims of elementary 
and secondary education, which, it seems to me, are 
emerging from the tumult of educational discussion 
and experimentation now under consideration. 

The special aims of elementary or early education 
are: — 

1. To nourish the mind of the child through a 
course of study which should comprise an orderly 
presentation of the whole field of knowledge in its 
elements, and thus acquaint the pupil with the world 
in which he lives and the civilization into which he is 
born, and of his own relations to them, including his 
duties and his privileges ; and thus to provide the op- 
portunity for the exercise of all the child's powers — 
mental and moral, aesthetic, manual or constructive 
— through good instruction and wise discipline. 

2. To guard and promote his normal physical de- 
velopment. 



THE COURSE OF STUDY 65 

Continuous development from the stage of early 
childhood, covered by the period of elementary educa- 
tion, into the stage of later childhood and youth, 
covered by the period of secondary education, does 
not involve the abandonment of these aims. On the 
contrary, these aims must continue to influence the 
pupil's education throughout the entire formative pe- 
riod. But they are subject to some modifications. 

The pupil's mind must still be nourished, but it is 
no longer possible for him to pursue simultaneously 
the elements of all knowledge when that knowledge 
has diverged into distinct subjects, except within cer- 
tain well-defined limits. 

The special aims of secondary education are, there- 
fore : — 

1. To discover and systematically to develop a 
human being's interests and capacities — intellectual, 
moral, aesthetic, manual or constructive. 

2. With constant regard to the progress of this dis- 
covery to so direct his development as gradually to 
emancipate him from external restraint and guidance, 
in order to render him, as far as possible, self-direct- 
ing; i.e. physically, mentally, morally stable, alert, 
vigorous, and active. 

3. To enable a youth to realize that he owes a 
duty to society as well as to himself ; and hence that 
the prizes of life — namely, wealth, leisure, honor — 
in order to possess lasting worth in his own estima- 



66 ATTEMPTED IMPROVEMENTS IN 

tion and in the estimation of his fellow-men must be 
earned; or when inherited, as they sometimes are, 
that they must be deserved ; that, in short, man's 
highest and most permanent ideal is service. 

The most serious obstacle to a speedy realization 
of these aims in secondary education has been the 
persistent refusal of certain important colleges to 
abate the emphasis on the classical course as the 
most desirable preparation for college work, and their 
failure to establish college courses for beginners in 
Latin and Greek. President Eliot, in his annual re- 
port for 1 894-1595, gives an interesting account of the 
courses most numerously attended during the past 
eleven years under the free elective system which pre- 
vails in Harvard College. He states that these courses 
are courses in Greek, Latin, English, German, French, 
philosophy, ethics, practical ethics, political economy, 
history, history of the fine arts, mathematics, physics, 
chemistry, botany and zoology, geology ; and then re- 
marks : 

The courses in the above list which are most thronged are 
those in English and in the most elementary German ; the first 
and second courses in French of college grade ; the elemen- 
tary courses in philosophy and economics ; the history courses 
(including the history of the fine arts), and the elementary 
courses in chemistry, botany, zoology, and geology. 

This list of subjects also sheds some light on an educational 
question now under discussion — the question of the most 



THE COURSE OF STUDY 6^ 

natural and the most needed additions to the existing pro- 
grammes of secondary schools. It suggests that in endeavor- 
ing to enrich the programmes of secondary schools, and thereby 
to carry into schools the subjects now dealt with by colleges, 
the selection of the new subjects should be made from the 
most elementary and most attractive courses named above. 
In successive annual reports the distribution among the college 
classes of the young men who have chosen the courses men- 
tioned has been given with precision, and from this distribution 
it appears that the younger students choose Enghsh, French, 
German, history, and natural science in larger proportion, and 
the older students philosophy, economics, and ethics. The 
indication therefore is that English, French, German, history 
and natural science are the topics which might be most judi- 
ciously added to the Latin, Greek, and mathematics, which are 
already well developed in the best schools. Much of the ele- 
mentary instruction which is now given in college in the five 
subjects named ought to be given in high schools and acad- 
emies, being entirely appropriate to the average age of pupils 
in the two upper classes of good secondary schools. 

The subjects just named may appropriately be 
termed modern subjects in contradistinction to Latin, 
Greek, and mathematics, which may be called the 
traditional subjects. 

Now it is important to note that many of these stu- 
dents are, in Harvard College, and in other colleges 
too, improving their opportunities to get, at the earli- 
est possible moment, instruction which was not ade- 
quately offered in the secondary schools from which 
they have come, or instruction from which they were 



68 ATTEMPTED IMPROVEMENTS IN 

debarred during their secondary-school work by the ex- 
actions of college admission requirements, so planned 
as to place special emphasis on Latin, Greek, and 
mathematics.^ Such emphasis, as is well known, has 
a profound influence on the entire work of a second- 
ary school by elevating into superiority a particular 
group of subjects — the subjects required for admis- 
sion to college — and correspondingly disparaging all 
other subjects, whether these latter subjects are pur- 
sued by pupils who are going to college, or by the 
far greater number of pupils who do not look for- 
ward to higher education. Not only are the mod- 
ern subjects thus relegated to an inferior rank, but, 
what is equally obvious and unfortunate, the pupils 
who pursue them are z/^so facto deemed of inferior 
intellectual ability and ambition to those who pursue 
the traditional subjects, both by their schoolmates and 
teachers ; and, to an almost greater degree, by the edu- 
cated and socially superior portion of the community, 
whose opinions in this regard rest on the traditions 
of their own training ; and also by those who have no 
educational traditions, but who hold these opinions 
as the conventionally correct thing, and who are 
very keenly alive to all the apparent advantages of 
common intellectual interests with those in whom 

1 The elementary studies [in the admission examinations] are not treated 
as equivalent ; Greek, Latin, and mathematics are most important. — Har- 
vard University Catalogue, 1894- 1895, P* ^^^* 



THE COURSE OF STUDY 69 

those interests are the result of home influence, social 
traditions, and school education. 

So long, therefore, as this emphasis on the tradi- 
tional subjects remains characteristic of college admis- 
sion requirements it will remain true that secondary- 
schools will be compelled to offer, first, a respectable 
programme in Latin, Greek, and mathematics, and to 
provide good instruction in those subjects, and then 
to fill in the remaining time of teachers and pupils, 
if there is any, with such scraps of modern subjects 
as can be conveniently fitted into the interstices of 
the programme. The truth of this statement will 
not, I think, be gainsaid when we remember that, in 
New England, the so-called English High Schools all 
have a strong course in Latin at least; and that in 
public high schools generally, although there are 
usually several parallel courses of study, the classical 
course is still regarded by pupils, teachers, and a con- 
siderable portion of the community as the course par 
excellence; the course or courses comprising Latin, 
though good, as inferior to the classical course; and 
the course or courses without either Latin or Greek 
as essentially inferior in quality to either of the others, 
and only to be pursued by pupils of limited capacity 
and very limited social position or ambition. That 
is to say, it is true that the more nearly the second- 
ary-school course of study approaches a course in 
modern subjects, the more it has been and still is dis- 



70 ATTEMPTED IMPROVEMENTS 

credited ; and consequently the more has it failed, 
speaking broadly, to attract the most capable pupils. 
There are evidences that this emphasis placed by 
leading colleges on a classical education, as the best 
secondary education for all who intend to go to college, 
is about to be materially diminished ; and with this 
changed attitude will come, of course, a great change 
in the opinion in which an education without Greek and 
Latin is held. Up to the present time, however, the 
shadow of tradition and of collegiate indifference still 
falls on all courses that do not contain at least one 
of the classical languages ; and this shadow still pre- 
vents the rapid and vigorous growth of such courses 
which the increasing and just appreciation on the 
part of the general public of the modern subjects both 
for training and for culture would otherwise occa- 
sion ; still postpones in many schools the two gains 
in secondary education which have been aimed at in 
the recent attempts to improve the course of study 
and which have been described above, namely : a 
modern equipment for all pupils ; an equipment which, 
in the absence of further scholastic training, serves to 
prepare them to take their places in the world as 
participators in its affairs, and incidentally, either with 
or without the classics, provides adequate preparation 
for further study through work well done, and the 
adaptation of the training to the special needs and 
tastes of individuals. 



IV 



WHAT SHOULD THE MODERN SECONDARY 
SCHOOL AIM TO ACCOMPLISH ? 



IV 



WHAT SHOULD THE MODERN SECONDARY 
SCHOOL AIM TO ACCOMPLISH? 

The secondary school in this country, especially the 
public high school, is just beginning to assume, con- 
sciously, the importance of an independent educational 
institution. There will no doubt continue to be here- 
after, as there have been in the past, "preparatory 
schools " ; that is, schools whose aims and work are 
determined wholly by college entrance requirements ; 
but, in general, the secondary school is not destined to 
be a preparatory school. It will aim not merely to 
prepare for education, it will aim at education itself. 
This statement does not mean, of course, that the 
secondary school will aim to offer a complete educa- 
tion, but that the school will decline to continue to 
defer, until the pupil enters college, the specific train- 
ing in knowledge and power which enables him to 
get a proper acquaintance with modern life, its prob- 
lems and opportunities, and the corresponding degree 
of power to participate intelligently and successfully 
in human affairs. 

73 



74 WHAT SHOULD THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 

This is the meaning of the rapidly changing cur- 
ricula of our secondary schools. But the most obvious 
recent evidence of this revised conception of secondary 
education is the demand that any subjects well pursued 
in the secondary school shall be made available in 
satisfying the requirements for admission to college. 
In other words, the schools are beginning to demand 
that while, heretofore, they have, very generally, 
followed the colleges in regarding Latin and Greek as 
the most valuable subjects in the course of study for 
all secondary-school pupils, and for those pupils who 
intended to go to college in particular, the colleges 
shall now follow the schools in abating this emphasis 
on the traditionally preferred subjects ; and when they 
make this demand, they make it in the interests of the 
pupils themselves. The question here at issue is of 
course broader than the question whether the classics 
or modern languages and science possess the greatest 
educational value. The question is, What is the inde- 
pendent function of modern secondary education, and 
what are the form and content of the most desirable 
programme through which this function may be ful- 
filled .? 

At the outset, it will be necessary to glance, once 
more, at the present condition and contemporary aims 
of elementary (pre-secondary) education, in order that 
we may see what the groundwork is on which the 
secondary education of the immediate future may 



AIM TO ACCOMPLISH? 75 

build; and also that we may determine, approxi- 
mately, the time limits of secondary education itself. 

It is well known that the elementary school, until 
quite recently, confined itself almost entirely, for the 
first eight or nine years of the pupil's school life, to the 
school arts — reading, writing, arithmetic, and English 
grammar — together with a good deal of statistical 
book geography, and usually a little history and civil 
government. This curriculum is rapidly giving way to 
the modern "enriched" curriculum, with its nature study, 
its clay modelling, its drawing, and other forms of 
elementary instruction in the fine arts, its manual train- 
ing, its biographical and historical studies, its literature^ 
its foreign language, its music, its physical training; 
and it is tolerably clear that these rapid changes now 
going on in the elementary-school courses of study, 
though doubtless often the result of mere imitation, are 
.fundamentally due to corresponding changes of aim. 

In the process of transition from the old to the new, 
there is much confusion. Mistakes are doubtless made. 
We sometimes have a faulty and belated enrichment 
of only the later years of the grammar-school course, 
instead of a complete revision and enrichment of the 
course from the beginning ; we have congested courses 
and the corresponding scrappy and superficial work ; 
we have many teachers poorly prepared or not prepared 
at all to adapt themselves to the requirements of the 
newer courses of study ; and hence a just estimate of 



y6 WHAT SHOULD THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 

what is or may be accomplished is difficult and often 
impossible. Individuals within and without the pro- 
fession, and even whole communities, unable to see 
the unifying aim and general purpose which under- 
lie specific changes recommended, may regard these 
changes as fads, and refuse their consent to have them 
tried, or at least, may withhold their support and en- 
couragement. 

But it is evident that the old, narrow course of 
study, with its formal content and mechanical routine, 
is doomed ; and that a richer course of study, with a 
broader and more inspiring conception of the elemen- 
tary school-teacher's responsibilities and opportunities, 
is taking its place. The old conception of the proper 
function of the first eight or nine years of the pu- 
pil's school education was a thorough drill in the 
school arts — the instruments of the acquisition and 
expression of knowledge. The new conception, the 
present aim of elementary school education, seems to 
me to be fairly expressed in the following statement: 
Elementary, or pre-secondary school education, should 
provide the most salutary physical environment for 
the pupil, and promote his normal physical develop- 
ment through appropriate training. It should open 
the mind of the child and let the world in. It should 
stimulate and gratify curiosity in every field of worthy 
human activity, and utilize this curiosity for the ac- 
quisition of knowledge and the development of incipi- 



AIM TO ACCOMPLISH? 'J'J 

ent permanent interests in and power over this 
knowledge. It should acquaint the pupil with his 
duties and his privileges as a temporarily dependent 
member of society, and promote the development of 
habits of thought and conduct in harmony with his 
growing insight. At about the age of twelve the 
period of secondary education should begin. 

What, now, is the function of modern secondary 
education } The answer to this question must be 
sought in an interpretation of recent changes in sec- 
ondary-school courses of study; for these changes 
represent not only the endeavor of the schools to 
meet the more or less reasonable demands of modern 
communities, but also the endeavor, on the part of 
thinking persons, both teachers and laymen, to make 
the schools minister to what seem, on careful investi- 
gation, to be the fundamental needs and real interests 
of society and of the individual. 

If we now turn to secondary-school programmes 
as they are, we find that, during the recent past, 
these programmes have shown a rapidly increas- 
ing tendency to change from the old, single, fixed 
curriculum, embracing chiefly Latin, Greek, and mathe- 
matics, to two or more parallel courses of study, com- 
prising many other subjects, as well as one or both or 
neither of the classical languages. Still more recently 
there is a marked tendency to convert all these 
courses into a single, flexible course, from which the 



^S WHAT SHOULD THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 

pupil may, under certain restrictions, select his studies 
at will; that is to say, recent changes in secondary- 
school programmes have been in the direction of 
scope and flexibility. It need hardly be repeated that 
these changes are chiefly the result of external de- 
mands and of the convictions of the teachers who 
manage the schools. They have. not been stimulated 
by the marked encouragement of the colleges ; for, at 
the present day, several important colleges still decline 
to regard any pre-collegiate course of study as com- 
parable in value to the traditional classical course. The 
present characteristics of secondary-school programmes 
have, therefore, developed in spite of the attitude of 
the colleges rather than because of their cooperation. 
Bearing in mind the great influence of collegiate 
preferences on pre-collegiate courses of study, it must 
be admitted that these characteristics show clearly 
that whatever else the secondary school may attempt, 
it must afford equal opportunities to all pupils to get 
the elements of general culture, whether the pupils 
subsequently go to college or not; and that, on 
this point, the teachers and the community are in 
substantial agreement, whatever the attitude of the 
colleges may be. But what is general culture? This 
question I shall answer by and by. There is still 
something that I wish to say on the importance of 
recent changes in secondary-school programmes con- 
sidered as the result of reasonable public demands. 



AIM TO ACCOMPLISH? 79 

The rapid development of the public high school 
and the final acceptance and cheerful support of it as 
a fixed and indispensable portion of our public school 
systems, date only from the recent past. Anti-high- 
school waves no longer traverse the country since the 
high school has ceased to serve only a limited por- 
tion of the community by a too close adherence to 
the classical course of study, the preferred college 
preparatory course; and since it has aimed to adapt 
itself more and more through the scope and flexibility 
of its programmes to the growing demands of the 
whole community, so far as the differing opportunities 
and capacities of the children permit. 

Together with this improved adaptation of the school 
to the needs of each individual, there is also a growing 
recognition of the important social function which the 
school has to fulfil. This is as it should be. The life 
of any institution of modern society depends on its 
efficacy in promoting public as well as private ends. 
It has been justly said that "all educational institu- 
tions must die which do not directly and conspicuously 
promote either the spiritual or material interests of 
men." Now, the material and the spiritual interests 
of men change with advancing civilization; hence, the 
primary social function of all education, and, in par- 
ticular, of secondary education, is to adapt every 
individual to the civilization of his time. It is no 
wonder that contemporary thought should emphasize 



80 WHAT SHOULD THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 

this function of modern education; the only wonder 
is that we have not emphasized it long ago. 

How modern elementary or pre-secondary school 
education at present begins the fulfilment of this func- 
tion was briefly set forth above. It was pointed out 
that during the stage of elementary education the 
child was to be made responsive ' to the varied inter- 
ests of life ; was to have the opportunity to exercise 
all his powers ; and was to develop habits of thought 
and conduct in harmony with his growing insight as 
a temporarily dependent member of society. On this 
basis secondary education is to begin. 

The time for secondary education to begin is not 
arbitrarily chosen. The years covered by it, say from 
the pupil's thirteenth to his nineteenth or twentieth 
year, mark the transition from early childhood into 
later childhood and youth ; the period during which 
the child should put away childish things and learn to 
appreciate the interests and the purposes of men; to 
find his place in the social whole, and to realize the 
interdependence of public and private interests. It is 
the period when life aims and life habits emerge dis- 
tinctly, and when they, so far as they are amenable to 
education, may, therefore, be permanently influenced. 
These Hfe aims and life habits depend, primarily, on 
the gradual development of the pupil's dominant in- 
terests and powers ; for an individual's dominant inter- 
ests and powers wholly determine the kind of work 



AIM TO ACCOMPLISH? 8 1 

he voluntarily engages in, and also the sources of 
his pleasures; and thus ultimately wholly determine 
his productiveness and the character of his public 
and private life. To carry forward the work of de- 
velopment already begun in the elementary school, 
and at the same time to discharge its duty to society 
as well as to the individual, it is, therefore, clear 
that secondary education should especially promote the 
development of each pupiVs dominant interests and 
powers ; and further, that it should seek to render 
these interests and powers subservient to life's serious 
purposes ^ and also to the possibility of participation in 
the refined pleasures of life. 

The serious purposes of life are, first, self-support; 
or, when that is unnecessary, some worthy form of 
service; second, intelligent, active participation in hu- 
man affairs, — the desire to be one who, while perform- 
ing his private duties and enjoying whatever leisure he 
may earn or deserve, is to work with his fellow-men 
for the continuous improvement and happiness of his 
race, his nation, and his own immediate community. 

The refined pleasures of life are found in the ability 
to participate with intelligence and appreciation in 
the intellectual and aesthetic interests of cultivated 
men. These pleasures, like most of the inspiration to 
worthy living in the pursuit of the serious purposes 
of life, are brought within the reach of men through 
general culture. 



82 WHAT SHOULD THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 

This is the meaning of the scope of the modern 
secondary-school programme, and also of the grow- 
ing tendency toward flexible rather than mandatory 
programmes, especially in the public high schools, so 
far as these programmes are based on reasonable 
public demands — demands approved by thoughtful 
teachers. It seems to me, therefiDre, that the inde- 
pendent function of modern secondary education is 
fairly described in the following statement : — 

First, to promote the pupil's normal physical devel- 
opment. 

Second, to stimulate every individual to aim at intel- 
ligent self-support or some worthy form of life-work, 
whether he inherits an income or not ; and to give him 
general preparation for such activity. 

Third, to stimulate and prepare each pupil, so far 
as his age and the time limits of secondary education 
permit, to participate, intelligently and helpfully, in 
promoting the welfare of the society of which he is 
to form a part. 

Fourth, to prepare and to stimulate each pupil to 
carry forward his own development uninterruptedly, 
so far as his circumstances permit, through self-teach- 
ing, whether he continues his studies in some higher 
institution after his school life is closed, or whether 
he enters at once on his active life work. 

This conception of secondary education I now in- 
tend to discuss and justify. 



AIM TO ACCOMPLISH? 83 

It will be seen that the statement of the function of 
secondary education just given comprises three classes 
of aims, namely, vocational aims^ social aims, and cul- 
ture aims. These three aims are, of course, not sep- 
arable in practice, although they can be rarely, if ever, 
equally influential in determining any particular phase 
of school work. Moreover, as I shall endeavor to 
show farther on, the attempt to separate them in prac- 
tice would greatly impair their efficacy; and, in par- 
ticular, the only way to realize the culture aims for 
many pupils will be the close affiliation which the 
pupils must be led to see between these and the voca- 
tional and social or civic aims. These three aims, then, 
ought together to permeate and underlie all the activi- 
ties of the school. We may, however, discuss them 
separately. 

To assert that secondary education should minister 
to vocational aims does not mean that the secondary 
school should teach a trade or a profession. It means, 
primarily, that the school should acquaint the pupil 
with the meaning and the importance of a vocation ; 
but it also means that the school should give the pupil 
such general preparation for the life pursuit for which 
his tastes and aptitudes especially qualify him, that 
when he leaves the secondary school he may enter on 
the preparation for his chosen pursuit, or that pursuit 
itself, with some knowledge of its scope and meaning, 
some knowledge of the underlying principles on which 



84 WHAT SHOULD THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 

success in it depends, and some power over its funda- 
mental facts and processes. 

Such preparation the secondary school may be ex- 
pected to give, both directly and indirectly; indirectly 
through the inspiring example of cultivated teachers 
devoted to their vocation; teachers who consciously 
but judiciously cultivate sympathetic relations with 
their pupils, and lose no opportunity to teach, unob- 
trusively and without preaching, the bearing of all 
education on a life of usefulness. Such teaching we 
have a right to expect in the secondary school. Who 
can doubt that it would have an important influence 
on the development of a permanent tendency in all 
teachable pupils toward an active life ; toward an 
anticipation of the time when they, too, having made 
the best possible use of their present opportunities, 
might lay hold on life's larger duties and become 
independent workers in the world.? 

But we also expect the secondary school to minister 
directly to vocational aims through its course of study. 
Vocations, speaking broadly, are mechanical or indus- 
trial, commercial, and intellectual. The vocational 
aims of the secondary school for intellectual pursuits 
— for the professions — have long been recognized 
and justified, and need not detain us. It should be 
said, however, that secondary education has not been 
so administered in the past that this function has been 
adequately discharged, although recognized. A few, 



AIM TO ACCOMPLISH? 85 

moments ago I reminded you that since an individ- 
ual's greatest capacity for service and for happiness 
depends on the discovery and cultivation of his per- 
manent interests and real abilities, the pupil's gradual 
self-revelation is one of the most important functions of 
secondary education. This self-revelation and the cor- 
responding development based on it have often been 
thwarted, or at least obscured and delayed if not en- 
tirely thwarted, by the narrow and rigid programmes 
of the past. With the advent of an enlarged scope, 
and the flexibility now happily becoming general 
in secondary-school programmes, we may confidently 
hope for steady improvement in this regard in the 
future. We must admit, however, that the vocational 
aims of the secondary-school as regards preparation 
for professional pursuits are recognized and justified, 
whatever shortcomings in achievement there may be. 
What we do not yet fully recognize, however, is the 
function of the secondary school as regards the voca- 
tional aims of those who subsequently devote them- 
selves to industrial and commercial pursuits. This 
function deserves recognition on the broadest grounds, 
both for the sake of the vocational interests them- 
selves, and for the sake of all the possible interests 
which the individual or society has. 

This means that in addition to the purely intellectual 
courses of the school we should maintain in every 
secondary school, whether public or private, courses 



86 WHAT SHOULD THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 

in manual training, and commercial courses, which, 
together with their general educational aims, minister 
directly to vocational and social aims. 

I am aware that the argument for courses in man- 
ual training is not a new one. But who will assert 
that we have heeded it as it deserves to be heeded. 
Moreover, I desire to insist on the indispensable value 
of such courses in all secondary education, and not on 
the establishment of isolated manual training or com- 
mercial high schools, although I am ready to admit 
the present value of such separate schools as impor- 
tant transitional stages in the evolution of the com- 
prehensive scheme of secondary education toward 
which I believe we are tending, and which seems 
to me both inevitable and desirable. Moreover, in 
the existing manual-training classes, and manual- 
training or mechanic-arts high schools, pedagogical 
rather than vocational and social ends have received 
most attention and the greatest emphasis. This is 
attested by the prevalent tone of most of the dis- 
cussion of manual training, and also by the fact that 
manual-training classes and schools have been at- 
tended hitherto far more numerously by the children 
of business and professional classes than by the chil- 
dren of artisans. I am far from indifferent to the 
general educational value of appropriate manual train- 
ing for all classes of children of both sexes, as will 
be apparent farther on. But my present purpose is 



AIM TO ACCOMPLISH? 87 

to insist on the necessity of manual training and 
commercial courses in all secondary schools for voca- 
tional and social ends, and for the industrial and com- 
mercial classes in particular. 

First, as to_ manual training. The essential point 



to be kept in mind in the discussion of manual train- 
ing for vocational ends in education is this : " that 
ours is the epoch of industrial instability [and indus- 
trial specialization], by reason of which the working 
boy of to-day needs not so much any one trade as 
that combination of qualities which will enable him 
to turn with facility from one occupation to another 
as each in turn is supplanted in the course of the 
industrial evolution." Such training is of course 
very different from training for a single trade. " The 
policy of training boys for one narrow trade cannot 
permanently commend itself to men and women in 
an epoch of industrial change [and of highly special- 
ized mechanical skill]. On the contrary, the more 
specialized the processes of commerce and manu- 
facture become, the more must we insist on the edu- 
cation of all the powers of all the workers. The 
more stupefyingly monotonous the manipulation which 
the machine prescribes, the more must all stress be 
laid upon variety and thoroughness in training of 
mind as well as hand of all who are to tend machines. 
The greater the probability that the boy will be a 
motorman, merely pressing a button, that the com- 



SB WHAT SHOULD THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 

positor will be supplanted by the linotype, and the 
tailor by the little girl at the machine, the more must 
the school do for all three that which their occupa- 
tions can no longer do for them ; namely, teach them 
/to think and live and use all their faculties. The 
more precarious the position of the skilled man, the 
more must we demand of the schools versatility, thor- 
oughness, and the effort to make valuable people of 
the whole body of children." 

The social influence of manual training courses in 
all secondary schools is also important. "Where the 
school library and school workshop are coordinate 
parts of the public school system the Fourth of July 
floods of oratory concerning the dignity of labor may, 
perhaps, be safely dammed into a narrower channel, 
for the dignity of labor will then form a part of the 
daily experience of the boys and girls. To-day their 
experience teaches them that this nation believes that 
there should be scientific and literary education at 
the cost of the community, extending over several 
years, for one set of children; while for another and 
much larger set there are at most four or five years 
of instruction, of meagre reading, writing, and arith- 
metic, followed by entrance upon the work of life in 
early childhood, with no previous preparation for it 
and no unity whatever between the school and work."^ 

1 This quotation and the two preceding quotations are from " The Work- 
ing Boy," by Florence Kelley, American Journal of Sociology^ IL, 158. 



AIM TO ACCOMPLISH? 89 

Next as to commercial courses : " As varied and 
complex as are the wants of our national life, so 
varied and complex are the needs of our educational 
system. ... If we should find that there is an edu- 
cational need and no corresponding educational insti- 
tution, it becomes our duty as public-spirited citizens 
to do our best to secure the establishment of such 
institutions. ... 

** Nothing is more obvious and remarkable in the 
development of modern social life than the ever-in- 
creasing importance of the business classes of the 
community. Even in Europe, where the nobility, 
the army, the civil service, the learned professions, 
still occupy the leading social and political positions, 
the social status of the business classes is continually 
changing for the better. The business classes them- 
selves are acquiring a continually increasing influence 
in politics and society. In our own country, where 
business was from the beginning the occupation of 
the leading portion of the community, the business 
classes were never beyond the pale of society, as in 
Europe, but even here the relative position of busi- 
ness men in politics and society is rapidly changing, 
to the disadvantage of the classes formerly looked 
upon as social and political leaders. The heroes to 
whom our children look up, whose deeds are related 
with admiration, are to-day the great captains of trade 
and industry, as the great orators, preachers, and 



90 WHAT SHOULD THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 

lawyers were of a former period. Whether for weal 
or woe, the dominating tone of American society, the 
ideas of American youth, are set to an ever-increasing 
extent by the great railroad manager, the insur- 
ance director, the banker, the merchant, the manufac- 
turer." 1 

The aim of commercial education such as I desire, 
may be stated in a few words; it is "to awaken a 
profound interest in business as such ; to train a youth 
to an appreciation of the functions of business and 
business practice in our modern life ; to inform him 
as to the history of industry and trade ; to awaken 
his interest in its future ; to train him to keep his eyes 
open as to business possibilities ; to inspire him with 
a healthy respect for business in all its branches; to 
arouse a determination to become not only a success- 
ful business man in the ordinary sense of the term, 
but a useful one as well ; to beget a public spirit ; to 
excite an interest in the higher welfare of society ; in 
a word, to become a public-spirited, intelligent, well- 
educated and successful man of affairs."^ 

Although we have commercial courses in existing 
high schools and many so-called commercial colleges, 
it can hardly be claimed that the aims and work 
of these courses and commercial colleges meet the 

1 Professor Edmund J. James in an address before the American Bank- 
ers' Association. Published by the association, 
a Ibid. 



AIM TO ACCOMPLISH? 91 

demand just quoted. Secondary-school courses with 
such aims seem to me as important as the manual- 
training courses, and for like reasons — i.e. primarily 
for vocational and social education, but also, in an 
important sense, for the general education, the general 
culture, which may be based on them or naturally 
associated with them, and which without them is too 
often missed altogether by most children and youth 
of the industrial and commercial classes. 

Unless the public secondary school which the com- 
munity supports by taxation, or the public secondary 
school which invites the support of the community, 
responds to the two fundamental needs of our youth 
which have just been considered, pupils too often 
pass at once from the elementary schools to their 
life work ; or, if their circumstances permit, they may, 
so far as preparation for business is concerned, seek 
it, at present, in some inferior institution like the 
commercial colleges. In either case the result is 
likely to be attended by widespread ignorance among 
the industrial and commercial classes, which makes 
them the prey of the demagogue and the social agi- 
tator, and by the accompanying disheartening indif- 
ference to all interests except the narrowly useful, 
important as these are. A child who, on leaving the 
elementary school, thenceforward devotes himself to 
a trade or to business, is almost sure to have his in- 
terests limited by his occupation, whether with or 



92 WHAT SHOULD THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 

against his original inclination, to say nothing of the 
fact that his success is made extremely difficult be- 
cause of his ignorance and inadequate preparation. 
If, however, all obstacles to success are ultimately 
overcome by his unusual industry and natural capac- 
ity, in the end, the successful but unenlightened mer- 
chant or artisan is almost sure to swell the ranks of 
the philistines ; for he has missed the development 
of those extra-vocational interests which persons of 
some degree of cultivation possess in common, and 
which serve to enrich and sweeten life. 

I have urged the special importance of courses in 
manual training and commercial courses for the chil- 
dren of the industrial and commercial classes. But 
such courses are needed not merely to satisfy the 
educational needs of those classes. Many a youth 
from the professional classes would be much more 
useful and happy, much more successful, and a much 
more efficient member of society in after life, if, instead 
of attempting to pursue a profession which he has 
drifted into, or which has been arbitrarily chosen for 
him, he had cultivated his mechanical or business tastes 
and capacities, and had learned, through courses in man- 
ual training and commercial courses, while still a youth, 
to select the calling for which he is best fitted by na- 
ture. By failing to provide such courses for such a 
pupil we have prevented him from developing the powers 
which he has ; we have dwarfed his general culture by 



AIM TO ACCOMPLISH? 93 

requiring him to follow a course of instruction to which 
he was not adapted, and this has been followed by a 
professional training through which he could only hope 
to escape failure or at best to attain mediocrity ; and all 
this is a sinful perversion of opportunity. These courses 
are accordingly needed, as well as the purely intellect- 
ual courses, for the discovery and development of the 
dominant interests and capacities of all children. Byv 
placing such courses side by side with the intellectual 
course, by making them solid and liberalizing, we attach 
due weight to their scope and meaning; we put the 
stamp of general approval on them ; we dignify them ; we 
make them worth choosing, no matter from what class 
of society the pupil may come. By so doing, the school 
may minister directly and wisely to vocational aims. 

So much for vocational aims. We have seen that 
the courses which minister to them also minister in- 
cidentally and in an important sense to social aims. 
But the social aims themselves are too important for 
all classes of pupils to permit us to be satisfied with 
this. These social aims must themselves receive 
special recognition. 

To insist that the modern secondary school should 
minister to social aims does not mean that the sec- 
ondary school should give a legal or political educa- 
tion, but it means that the school shall give a training 
that prepares for the duties of good citizenship ; or, 
as it was phrased above, that prepares and stimulates 



/ 



94 WHAT SHOULD THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 

the pupil to active and intelligent participation in pro- 
moting the welfare of society. Such preparation 
necessitates some comprehension of the nature of 
organized society, that is, of the institutions and ac- 
tivities which society maintains, encourages, and per- 
mits for its stability, perpetuity, and prosperity ; that 
is, for the usefulness and happiness of its members. 
These institutions are, primarily, government or 
political institutions ; industrial and commercial in- 
stitutions and activities ; and educational institutions. 
The education demanded by society, therefore, justly 
insists on instruction in subjects that acquaint the 
pupil with these activities and institutions, that de- 
velops an interest in them, and the power to be of 
service in them. The principles and methods of 
municipal, state, and national government must be 
explained and made familiar to the pupil ; he must 
also receive instruction that will help him to under- 
stand the complex relations of our modern industrial 
system; and he should know something of the system 
of public education by which society strives to con- 
serve, improve, and transmit the progress it has 
made. 

Some of this instruction is, as has been said already, 
partly and incidentally covered by courses in manual 
training and commercial courses ; but it should be more 
directly and adequately provided for by courses in gov- 
ernment and economics, or at least of industrial history, 



AIM TO ACCOMPLISH? 95 

and by provision for some instruction in the history and 
present condition of education. Here, again, I wish to 
say that I am not unmindful of the existing provision 
for instruction in government and economics in second- 
ary schools. My plea is for a more comprehensive and 
ultimately intensive study of these subjects, together 
with a much greater use of history in all its phases than, 
so far as I know, we have heretofore attempted any- 
where. I am not pleading for forced exercises in the 
development of patriotism ; but for exercises that shall 
reveal through the life struggles of our own and other 
nations, through the deeds and sacrifices of historical 
heroes, through a comprehension of the origin of our 
laws and our duty regarding them, the grounds on 
which a real patriotism is based. Such instruction 
can be safely relied on for the development of a 
genuine appreciation of the blessings of good govern- 
ment and an aversion to corruption and misrule that 
may furnish a strong incentive to action in municipal, 
state, or national affairs when the time for action 
comes. 

"The recent campaign, among its most practical 
lessons, teaches most clearly that the enlightenment of 
the citizens is the most important of public duties and 
the main condition of continued freedom. All should, 
as far as possible, contribute to that education which 
extends the area, not of the license urged on by an- 
archists and the Utopias pictured by socialists, but of 



96 WHAT SHOULD THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 

liberty as developed healthily and steadily in obedience 
to the lessons of history and constructive thought." ^ 

Such a result can be achieved only by recognizing 
that political and industrial or economic enlightenment 
necessarily go together. " Man is an economic animal 
as well as a political animal, and is therefore born into 
an industrial system as inevitably as he is born into a 
political state. Economic consciousness exists and will 
lead to economic action, just as surely as political con- 
sciousness has led to political action ; and the question 
to be considered now is : How shall this economic con- 
sciousness best be enlightened and guided } Hitherto it 
has been left largely to the guidance of politicians, labor 
leaders, the press, and to the instructors in economics in 
the colleges and universities. And it must be admitted 
that for the future, also, by far the major part of the eco- 
nomic influence consciously exerted upon King Demos 
will continue to come directly from the first three of 
these four sources. They may be blind leaders of the 
blind, or the pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, 
it matters not, the crowd will follow into the open ditch, 
or into the land flowing with milk and honey." ^ 

Shall we continue to delegate this instruction to 
such unenlightened, almost always prejudiced or par- 
tisan teachers.'* Should we not rather provide in the 
secondary school for that great majority of our editors, 

^ Andrew D. White, in the Ju>rum, December, 1896. 
2 H. W. Thurston, in the School Review^ IV., 604. 



AIM TO ACCOMPLISH? 97 

politicians, and labor leaders who are without a col- 
lege education, the instruction that may help them to 
value a wise conservatism, and to recognize the com- 
prehensiveness and the complexity of present-day politi- 
cal and economic problems, and thus make them more 
intelligent and safer leaders of the people; and may 
we not hope through the same instruction to increase 
the number of men and women in the community also 
who appreciate the magnitude and difficulty of present- 
day problems, and decline to be taken in by plausible 
but fallacious solutions ? " As for the colleges and 
universities, their ideal function is to be a guide to 
the guides, and they cannot be further considered 
here than to offer for them a fervent prayer, in pass- 
ing, that they may be enabled to fulfil their ideal 
function." 

No function of society is capable of exerting a greater 
permanent influence on the social welfare than educa- 
tion. And in this country there is no social function of 
more vital concern to the people. Shall we continue to 
entrust the administration of this important function, 
both in the home and in the school, to persons who 
have no preparation whatever to guide them ? It 
seems to me that instruction in the history of education, 
and some instruction in the present problems of and 
present tendencies in education, should be given in 
every secondary school. Such instruction would give a 
much-needed public insight into present educational 

H 



98 WHAT SHOULD THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 

aims and practices in the light of their historical evolu- 
tion, and an intelligent interest in important contem- 
porary problems. Besides, can any one doubt the 
beneficent influence of such instruction on the education 
of children in the home, and on the promotion of the 
much-needed effective and sympathetic cooperation 
between the home and the school, a cooperation which 
is as far removed from meddlesome interference on the 
one hand, as it is from indifference on the other ? 

The intrinsic importance of the vocational and social 
aims is obvious. But another reason why so much 
stress has been laid on these aims is because through 
them alone is it possible, in my opinion, in many schools, 
for nearly half the pupils — I mean most of the boys 
— to realize culture aims. Girls and young women are 
attracted by the culture aims to a far greater extent 
than boys and young men. The boys have so many 
interests outside of the intellectual life of the school 
from which the girls are practically excluded, that for 
many of them the culture aims of the school shrink into 
insignificance ; and their achievements, such as they are, 
are due chiefly to the insistence of parents and teach- 
ers, or to the influence of impending examinations for 
admission to college. The difference between the appli- 
cation and zest of boys and girls in the secondary 
school was well summed up in my presence by a high- 
school youngster who was twitted by a schoolmate, a 
girl, on the inferior achievements of the boys as com- 



AIM TO ACCOMPLISH? 99 

pared with the girls. He said : ** Hm, the girls have 
nothing else to do." It has seemed to me that the way 
to enable the boys to realize that for the time being 
they too have nothing else to do, is to connect the school 
interests with life interests ; in other words, to so con- 
struct the school programmes that stress is laid through- 
out on the boy's vocational and social interests, so that 
these interests shall come naturally and gradually to 
include the culture interests as well. And this, I think, 
is not difficult to do, with a flexible and sufficiently com- 
prehensive programme, as was recently suggested by 
Professor Felix Adler. 

For example : The future artisan will be interested in 
the history of his craft; thence easily in the his- 
tory of industry ; thence in its effect on the progress 
of civilization; thence in the political as well as in- 
dustrial history of his race ; that is to say, in the 
evolution of modern society, with its contemporary 
industrial, economic, and political problems. History, 
economics, and government thus become interesting, 
because they may be shown to have an obvious relation 
to his dominant interest. Through history, the pupil 
may become interested in other peoples, with their 
literature and languages, and thus foreign languages 
may be and should be brought within the range of his 
interests. The obvious dependence of the thorough 
comprehension and pursuit of any trade on mathe- 
matics and natural science, leads to these sciences. 



100 WHAT SHOULD THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 

Again, the future merchant or manufacturer, whose 
business interests outweigh all other incentives to ac- 
tivity, should easily be led to take an interest in the 
business relations of his own city, town, or State with 
other cities, towns, and States, and thence, by an easy 
transition, to the commercial relations of his own 
country with foreign countries, and to the leading 
interests of foreign nations. Before long the depend- 
ence of commercial and industrial activity on the form 
and structure, the physical features of the earth's sur- 
face, and the raw materials of commerce and manufac- 
tures, which his commercial interest finds worthy of 
consideration, may be used to lead the pupil to natural 
science. Machinery for manufacture and for trans- 
portation are incidentally interesting, at first, because 
they constitute a part of the vast commercial activity 
to which the future merchant feels himself irresistibly 
drawn. Ere long, however, he finds that a compre- 
hension of them depends on a satisfactory knowledge 
of mathematics and physical science. Everywhere 
money and credit are used to carry on commercial 
enterprises. Banks and banking appear as important 
phases of commercial activity ; so also are the rela- 
tions of labor and capital, and contemporary schemes 
of cooperation. The government which furnishes the 
necessary guarantee of peace, and protection of prop- 
erty for the uninterrupted pursuit of all these com- 
mercial and industrial activities, is of interest because, 



AIM TO ACCOMPLISH? lOI 

once more, it is necessarily associated with his domi- 
nant commercial interest; and so the youth is led to 
study economics and civil government. Moreover, the 
history of commerce and industry lead easily and 
naturally to the history of civilization. 

Commercial relations with other nations make clear 
the value of foreign modern languages, and these, when 
once pursued, for whatever cause, may come to possess 
an interest of their own. A command of the mother- 
tongues as the means of all communication for business 
purposes, may be utilized to extend the knowledge of 
its literary resources, and thus bring to bear on the 
future merchant its far-reaching influences on aims, 
character, and tastes. Similarly the future artist, with 
his dominant aesthetic interest, may be led to take an 
interest in science, in mathematics, in history, and in 
language, because he finds in each of these subjects 
important assistance toward the cultivation of what he 
has most at heart. 

Thus, by judiciously grouping the various subjects 
about a youth's vocational interests, he may be led, 
naturally and with the least resistance, to substantial 
achievement in all the fields of study open to him. 
He may be led to general culture, because these 
fields of study are shown to minister primarily to 
his vocational interests ; because they make clearer 
the part he desires to play in the world, and 
strengthen his growing ability to sustain his part 



102 WHAT SHOULD THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 

well, to do his chosen work well, and to find 
his way with increasing certainty through the com- 
plex affairs of modern social and political life. But 
also, before long, we may hope, in most cases, 
because they afford that satisfaction which every 
human being feels in the enlargement of his mental 
horizon — because they bring within his reach the 
disinterested pleasures of science, history, literature, 
and art, and enable him to pass through the world 
alive to its beauties, its marvellous system, and its 
unsolved mysteries. 

So much for the vocational and social aims of sec- 
ondary education for their own sake, and for the use 
which could be made of them in the endeavor to 
realize the culture aims of the secondary school. I 
must make the most of the remaining space at my 
disposal for the discussion of the culture aims 
themselves. None of the aims of secondary educa- 
tion are more precious than these. I have already 
said that whatever functions may be attributed to 
the secondary school, none has been insisted on by 
the community with greater emphasis and perma- 
nence than that the secondary school should dissemi- 
nate the elements of general culture among the 
people. The public high school has been called 
" the people's college " ; and this designation is by 
no means to be considered as an attempt to elevate 
the secondary school into a rank which it does not 



AIM TO ACCOMPLISH? 103 

possess. Whatever of pretentiousness there may be, 
occasionally, in this term, in general it expresses 
merely the cherished expectation that the high 
school shall disseminate the beginnings of a liberal 
education — the elements of general culture — among 
those whose time and means will not permit a higher 
education. And that the private secondary school 
exists for the avowed purpose of laying the founda- 
tions of general culture need hardly be mentioned. 

But what is general culture .-* The meaning attached 
to this term until recently has been, almost univer- 
sally, restricted to acquaintance with the historical 
culture of the race embodied in the languages, his- 
tory, and literature of ancient Greece and Rome, 
together with some knowledge of mathematics; that 
is to say, general culture has been nearly synony- 
mous with classical scholarship. But a glance at 
modern courses of study in secondary schools and 
colleges, whether those courses of study are pre- 
scribed or elective, or a moment's reflection will 
show that the modern ideal of general culture is 
much broader than classical scholarship. It was 
natural that for a long time after the Renaissance 
the minds of men should turn with delight solely to 
the ancient masterpieces of literature and art, and 
to the ancient civilizations. These were the only 
models from which the new literatures and the new 
civilization could receive inspiration and guidance; 



104 WHAT SHOULD THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 

for modern literature and modern civilization had 
not then arisen. It is a truism to say that the range 
of life interests, the resources of civilization, have 
increased enormously since the Renaissance. While 
we feel on every hand the influence of classical tra- 
ditions in our modern culture, and while, therefore, 
we can never dispense with classical scholarship as 
an element of general culture, it still remains true 
that a new culture and a new civilization have arisen 
since the Renaissance, and especially since the 
eighteenth century, which have their own sources of 
inspiration and guidance, and present their own prob- 
lems for solution. To be ignorant of these resources 
and problems is for the modern man to be out of rela- 
tion with his time^ — is to miss general culture. 

The process of adjusting ourselves to this revised and 
enlarged conception of general culture is now going on. 
The old narrow ideal is tenacious of life. It is power- 
fully intrenched in existing courses of study, and in 
educational traditions ; in particular, it is still sustained 
by collegiate preferences for classical courses in sec- 
ondary schools ; and lastly and chiefly, it is strong by 
virtue of real achievements in the education of many 
generations of men. But alone it can no longer suffice. 
Tempora mutantur. 

Once more, then, what is general culture } It seems 
to me that general culture means, primarily, the capac- 
ity to understand, appreciate, and react on the resources 



AIM TO ACCOMPLISH? I05 

and problems of modern civilization. These resources 
and problems are found in the preservation and im- 
provement of the health, physical vigor, and physical 
well-being of the race ; in modern governments ; in 
modern industry and commerce ; in modern literatures 
and languages — the record of the ideals and aspira- 
tions of the race in modern times ; in history — the 
record of the achievements of the race; and in the 
art treasures of all times. As I have just said, we 
can never exclude from the modern conception of 
general culture the influence of classical scholarship, 
but the place to attempt the realization of classical 
scholarship itself is, in my opinion, not the secondary 
school, but the college. 

The importance of the modem culture in modern life 
is so comprehensive and so great that we should be 
false to our trust if we did not make adequate provi- 
sion for it in the secondary school. At the same 
time, the pursuit of the classical languages in second- 
ary schools is such a time-consuming pursuit as to 
very nearly preclude the serious pursuit of other sub- 
jects. This has become so obvious that the number 
of non-collegiate pupils who elect the so-called classical 
course, including both Greek and Latin, is constantly 
diminishing throughout the country, and the number is 
destined to decrease still more rapidly, as soon as the 
influence of collegiate preferences no longer makes 
Greek what a member of the Harvard faculty has called 



I06 WHAT SHOULD THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 

a " protected industry "; that is to say, if some colleges 
did not make it harder to get into college without Greek 
than with it. This protection cannot last long. Are 
we, then, in danger of losing the influence of classical 
antiquity in secondary education, as such, altogether ? 
The reasons for this apprehension have already been 
indicated in what has gone before, but deserve explicit 
statement. They are : the indisputable and superlative 
importance of modern culture, as distinct from classical 
culture, in modern life ; and the equally indisputable 
fact that the attempt to achieve classical scholarship, 
together with the elements of modern culture, has al- 
ready led to congested programmes. These congested 
programmes threaten to become worse. 

We may as well admit that classical scholarship, i.e. 
literary appreciation of the classics, is not attainable in 
the secondary school. What is attainable is a fair to 
good elementary acquaintance with the classical lan- 
guages, which is a very different thing. This achieve- 
ment, for many pupils, is important, but, at present, it 
is not economically attained. Now, is it not true that 
what we value most in the classics for all secondary- 
school pupils who do not go to college, what we regard 
as most important, is to preserve the refining and en- 
lightening influence of Greek and Roman thought, 
whether embodied in ancient art or Hterature or institu- 
tions, on the thought and life of to-day, and of all time ? 
It is my belief that this influence can be best realized, 



AIM TO ACCOMPLISH? lO/ 

in secondary education, not primarily through an ex- 
tended course in the classical languages, but through a 
serious study of history and art, together with transla- 
tions of the classical literatures into the mother-tongue, 
and other modern languages. What secondary-school 
pupil can appreciate Homer, ^schylus, or Demos- 
thenes, Virgil, Horace, or Cicero in the original, as he 
can appreciate them in admirable translations ? We 
have begun to recognize the magnificent possibilities 
of instruction in the language and literature of Eng- 
lish-speaking nations for their own sake. Why should 
we not also use the mother-tongue to bring the minds 
of our young boys and girls into actual touch with 
the inspiring writers of antiquity. What they now 
see " through a glass darkly " they would then see 
"face to face." If such study, preceded or accom- 
panied by a serious study of the modern languages, 
be then followed by a brief course in one of the clas- 
sical languages, or both of them, during the last year 
or two of the secondary-school course, sufficient to 
enable a youth to realize the importance of these lan- 
guages to a full comprehension of the history and 
structure of his mother-tongue, and the significance of 
Latin and Greek in all advanced linguistic study, the 
full educational value of the classics for secondary- 
school pupils would be economically and fully realized. 
Here, then, we have in outline the scope of a 
modern secondary school, and at the same time, 



toS WHAT SHOULD THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 

some indication of the order of importance, objec- 
tively considered, which the several departments of 
work possess in the general scheme. The pro- 
gramme must contain certain prescribed studies, and 
also a considerable range of electives. Prescribed 
studies are needed, lest the pupil should miss voca- 
tional, social, ethical enlightenment, on the one hand, 
and an appreciative understanding of nature on the 
other, together with the development of the corre- 
sponding powers ; a considerable range of elective 
studies is required for the attainment of the elements 
of general culture, so far as that is not covered by 
a group of prescribed studies, and for the discovery 
and appropriate development of dominant interests 
and powers. 

Besides possessing scope and flexibility, the pro- 
gramme should be closely articulated to the pupil's 
earlier course of study, should offer equal opportuni- 
ties to all pupils, and should insist on adequate con- 
tinuity and intensiveness in the pursuit of subjects 
once undertaken. 

A secondary school with such a programme should 
also be, incidentally, a "preparatory school"; and I 
think it is safe to predict that ere long the colleges 
that fail to recognize the work of such a school, when 
well done, as suitable preparation for college courses, 
will be side-tracked ; the main line of progress will 
lead past, instead of through, their doors. 



AIM TO ACCOMPLISH? IO9 

The conception of the modern secondary school 
which I have endeavored to set forth in this chapter 
is that of a comprehensive institution ; an institution 
that seeks to prepare the pupil, during the years 
from twelve to eighteen or nineteen, so far as possi- 
ble, for life's duties, opportunities and privileges; an 
institution in which the various courses of study all 
minister to vocational, social, and culture aims ; in 
which the teachers employ these courses of study to 
discover and develop the dominant interests of the 
pupils, and help each child to cultivate the powers 
which will enable him to pursue that calling for which 
he is best fitted by nature to his own best advantage, 
and most acceptably to society. 

The interpretation of general culture for which I 
have been contending as the aim in secondary educa- 
tion is, primarily, the culture demanded by modern 
life. 

By the close association of studies that minister 
chiefly to vocational and social aims, with courses of 
study that minister chiefly to culture aims, as such, 
the school should provide the most favorable condi- 
tion for the vocational and social development of the 
pupil, and for the general cultivation of his mind and 
heart; we would thus endeavor to reach his whole 
nature, and to render him serviceable, in the best 
sense, at the same time to himself and to society. 
Through courses for the simultaneous pursuit of voca- 



no THE AIM OF THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 

tional, social, and culture aims, the secondary school 
may become, as it should, a guiding, inspiring, unify- 
ing force in American life. To bring to bear on the 
rising generation the influence of this force is the 
function which the modern secondary school should 
aim to fulfil. 



V 



SECONDARY EDUCATION AS A UNIFYING 
FORCE IN AMERICAN LIFE 



V 



SECONDARY EDUCATION AS A UNIFYING 
FORCE IN AMERICAN LIFE 

In the division of labor among the various institu- 
tions of organized society, a particular task has been 
assigned to the secondary school. It is true, I think, 
that generally, in this country, the task thus assigned 
has been only vaguely conceived, or often not con- 
ceived at all by either the community or the school. 
Both have usually followed established precedents in 
other communities and other schools. This procedure 
answered very well until the results were examined 
in the light of what society really wanted its sec- 
ondary schools to accomplish. Amid the turmoil of 
various and sometimes conflicting or even exorbitant 
demands of recent times, it seems clear that the sec- 
ondary school is expected to promote increased effi- 
ciency in work, business, or profession, greater insight 
into public needs, and more disinterested faithfulness 
in public service; together with the diffusion of the 
elements of general culture, of all that serves to 
mould character and disposition, and to enrich and 
I 113 



114 SECONDARY EDUCATION 

sweeten life. It is to accomplish this task for all 
classes alike, and thus disseminate common interests, 
provide equal opportunities, and promote the widest 
possible diffusion of well-being among all the people. 
The answer to the question, What is the particular 
task assigned to the modern secondary school, is, 
therefore, not difficult, in general terms. 

Its task is to train men^ workers^ and citizens — this 
should be its aim. Such an aim is what we have in 
mind and what the public have in mind when we 
and they demand, more or less vaguely, that the 
school shall " prepare for life." Now, the only 
real preparation for life's duties, opportunities, and 
privileges is participation in them, so far as they can 
be rendered intelligible, interesting, and accessible 
to children and youth of school age ; and hence, the 
first task of secondary (and all) education is to pro- 
vide this participation as fully and as freely as pos- 
sible. Simple as this answer is, and plainly as the 
steadily increasing scope of both elementary and 
secondary education reflects its truth, it is only in 
recent times that we have seen the futility of any 
other conception. 

Some years ago we began to realize that a drill 
in the three "r's" and English grammar (usually 
taught from a book), together with book geogra- 
phy consisting chiefly of statistics relating to location, 
population, areas, and products, failed to educate 



IN AMERICAN LIFE II5 

our children ; that is, that such a course of study, 
even though faithfully pursued and rigidly adminis- 
tered, left too many children — most of those who 
could not attend school more than six or eight 
years — without any permanent interests in nature, or 
in human institutions and human achievements ; and 
without much inclination to acquire such interests 
by further study, or power to assimilate or apply 
such knowledge and skill as they had gained. This 
was the natural result of an attempt to prepare for 
life without using life's opportunities as the source 
and means of such preparation. Accordingly we 
have changed our plan. We are bringing nature into 
the schoolroom and we go out to meet it; we bring 
literature, history, art, and manual training into the 
school as a means of preparation for life, instead of 
" preparing " our pupils for contact with these sources 
of inspiration, guidance, and training, after school 
life is over. To-day, therefore, we aim to extend the 
scope of the elementary-school course of study so 
that it shall comprise no less than the whole field of 
knowledge, in its elements, and provide appropriate 
training for the exercise of all of the child's powers 
in every field of worthy human activity. 

Experience had further taught us that the rigid 
administration of the old course of study did not 
permit any child, however bright or diligent he might 
be, to advance more rapidly than his neiglibor, how- 



Il6 SECONDARY EDUCATION 

ever dull, lazy, or indifferent that neighbor might be. 
Quite apart from the obvious fact that such a pro- 
cedure accentuated the drudgery, the weariness, the 
indifference, and even the aversion, that too many 
children associated with school pursuits, the injustice 
of it was at last recognized. To-day a number of 
beneficent plans for permitting pupils to advance as 
rapidly as their capacity will permit are in operation 
in various parts of the country. While none of these 
plans are wholly satisfactory, yet they are all vastly 
better than the old regime ; and they are all of them 
indications that a much-needed reform is well on its 
way. Recent experiments in the endeavor to improve 
an unsatisfactory elementary education have thus 
taught us two things; viz. that elementary education 
should possess a scope as wide as human interests, 
and that its administration should be as flexible as 
human capacities require and permit. 

Meanwhile we had also been aware for some time 
that the scope and administration of our secondary 
education and its relation to elementary education 
were unsatisfactory and needed revision. It had 
become apparent that the existing dominant courses 
of study were almost wholly the result of tradition, 
and, in important respects, out of relation to contem- 
porary needs. The course of study was limited 
almost exclusively to Latin and Greek, together with 
algebra, geometry, and sometimes trigonometry; and 



IN AMERICAN LIFE II7 

it gradually became obvious to interested persons 
that, although the pupils had pursued the classical 
languages and elementary mathematics for four years 
with diligence and more or less success, they had not 
had time for any serious study of any other subjects. 
They had left school without any training, worth the 
name, in the power to use their mother-tongue, and 
with scarcely any acquaintance with its literature; 
they had had no time for history save a scrappy his- 
tory of Greece and Rome ; had had no time for 
natural sciences; had had no time for a modern lan- 
guage; had had no time for any instruction in draw- 
ing or the fine arts; had had no opportunity to get 
manual training, or commercial training; had had no 
opportunity to promote their normal physical develop- 
ment through appropriate physical exercises ; and 
when, further, it was noted that this course must be 
pursued by all alike just as the elementary course 
before it had been, — with which, of course, it had no 
discernible articulation, — it was evident to all thought- 
ful persons that for most of that great majority of 
pupils who never went to college, secondary educa- 
tion, like the barren elementary education that had 
preceded it, was a perversion of opportunity, and 
involved a sad waste of time. 

Such a course of study left the pupil at eighteen 
or nineteen untouched by the beauties, the solace, 
and the inspiration of the literature of his mother- 



Il8 SECONDARY EDUCATION 

tongue, and without the power to use his mother- 
tongue with something approaching accuracy, ease, 
vigor, and grace ; it gave him no historical training 
that would enable him to understand and appreciate 
the institutional life of organized modern society ; it 
gave him no training in natural science, and so left 
him without the power to understand or appreciate 
some of the most important thought and activities of 
his time ; it gave him no training in a modern lan- 
guage — German or French — that would open to him 
the intellectual resources and the genius of other, 
modern nations ; it gave him no training that enabled 
him to share with understanding and appreciation, to 
some extent, in the art treasures of his own and of 
all time; it afforded no manual training that might 
enable him to understand the dignity and the impor- 
tance of manual as well as intellectual labor, or fit 
him to enter on such work, if adapted to his needs 
and tastes, with an increased prospect of immediate 
usefulness ; and lastly, it had paid no attention to 
his physical development and vigor, on which all 
his happiness and usefulness ultimately depend. 
Such a course, whatever it might be as a preparation 
for a college course that might make good the omis- 
sions and defects of earlier education, could not be 
" a preparation for life," — could not conduce to 
leadership in the life of to-day. Contemporary needs 
were not provided for in it save incidentally and 



IN AMERICAN LIFE II9 

remotely. The mistake of elementary education had 
been repeated. The attempt had been made to pre- 
pare the pupil for life without participation in life's 
opportunities, privileges, and duties. 

The course was, however, justified on the ground 
of its disciplinary value. No matter whether knowl- 
edge, or interest in the acquisition of knowledge, or 
interest in the great contemporary concerns of life and 
some power to deal with them, had been acquired or 
not, the mind, it was said, had received a training that 
would fit it to undertake, with every expectation of 
success, any problems or career whatever. This theory 
was about as sound as that a training in foot-ball would 
give men an interest in and train power for black- 
smithing, or farming ; or that a course in tennis would 
develop interest and power in carpentry — in the mak- 
ing of tables, cupboards, or houses. As soon as men 
began to reflect on the absurdity of this view, it was 
naturally perceived that the mental gymnastics had 
been misapplied ; that the development of power could 
not be dissociated from Subject-matter; and, conse- 
quently, that to develop interest in the vital concerns 
of modern life and power over them, there must be 
participation in those very concerns. 

The improvement or "enrichment" of the school 
course of study, and the provision of suitable devices 
whereby any pupil may advance as rapidly or as slowly 
as his capacity makes possible* or desirable, together 



120 SECONDARY EDUCATION 

with the principle of election during the last four, 
five, or six years of the course, i.e. during the period of 
secondary education — these changes in the organiza- 
tion and administration of education, these reforms 
affecting the scope and flexibility of the whole course 
of study, from the primary school through the high 
school or academy, are teaching us that the school can 
confidently expect to prepare its pupils for life only 
— let me repeat — through participation in life's op- 
portunities, privileges, and duties, so far as these can 
be rendered intelligible and accessible to children and 
youth of school age; and further, that anything short 
of such actual participation in the various interests of 
humanity. — its physical health and vigor, its thought, 
aspirations, serious activities, and refined pleasures — 
converts school education into a meaningless routine, a 
routine which really misses the " preparation for com- 
plete living " which all education should guarantee. 

Experience and reflection have accordingly led, on 
the one hand, to the single high school with a com- 
prehensive general course of study, which offers, 
through a considerable range of electives, the subjects 
which the pupils severally need, including those sub- 
jects which satisfy the requirements for admission to 
college ; and, on the other hand, to the high school 
with several courses of study, or to separate high 
schools, through one of which a youth may seek 
preparation for college, or " for life." 



IN AMERICAN LIFE 121 

Just here emerges a contemporary problem affecting 
the administration of our entire system of secondary 
education : — a social problem of far-reaching signifi- 
cance. Shall we have different kinds of separate high 
schools totally independent of each other, or shall we 
have a comprehensive institution with several closely 
related and interdependent departments which may, 
if thought necessary, be carried on in different build- 
ings ? 

My answer to this question may perhaps be best 
arrived at by a reference to the secondary schools of 
Europe, particularly of France and Germany. It is 
well known that in those countries it is a recognized 
principle of public policy that every career must be 
preceded by an appropriate general as well as tech- 
nical education; and that the secondary schools are 
maintained for the express purpose of providing for 
those who are to become leaders, particularly among 
the socially superior classes, the appropriate general 
training required. With the requirement of good 
general training as an essential preliminary to enter- 
ing on preparation for leadership in industry, business, 
or profession, I confess myself in hearty sympathy. 
Moreover, in the precise way in which each kind of 
secondary school is adjusted by law to a particular 
set of requirements with a particular future career in 
view, we have an admirable illustration of the con- 
scious adaptation on the part of society of well- 



122 SECONDARY EDUCATION 

organized means to perfectly definite ends. These 
secondary schools are social instruments of great effi- 
ciency, because their organization and work are made 
to answer to specific ends in German and French 
society. 

But there is another aspect of this organization of 
education, particularly in Germany, which cannot so 
readily win approval. Let me remind you that, in 
Germany, the several classes of schools present an 
intentional social stratification. The public element- 
ary school exists for the lowest social class, — for 
the unskilled laborers, for the petty tradesmen, for 
the employees of the railroads, and so on. In this ele- 
mentary school the child remains from his sixth to his 
fourteenth year. The secondary schools are of three 
kinds : the real-schitle with a six years' course of study, 
intended for the lower middle and the middle class, 
and the gymnasium and real-gymnasmm with nine 
years' courses, intended for the upper middle, and 
the socially superior and directing classes. There is 
no articulation between the elementary and the second- 
ary schools after the third year of the pupil's school 
life, and no articulation whatever between the differ- 
ent kinds of secondary schools. When we remember 
that the pupil enters the secondary school at about 
nine years of age, and plans to remain there until he 
has completed a six or nine years' course of study, 
depending upon the school which he has entered, it 



IN AMERICAN LIFE 1 23 

is easy to see how decided is the separation between 
these different kinds of schools. Since there is no 
attempt whatever to make them fit into each other, 
the result is a wide divergence of class interests, of 
tastes, of knowledge, and intellectual power. 

The social distinctions between these schools de- 
pend on differences in the courses of study and the 
privileges enjoyed by their graduates, and also, of 
course, on the differences in the tuition charged by 
each. The same tuition is charged in the gymnasium 
and real-gymnasium y but the tuition in the real-schule 
is about one-half that in the gymnasium^ and the tui- 
tion in the elementary school is less than half that of 
the real-schule. The gymnasium has always been 
looked upon as the secondary school, par excellence. 
It opens to its graduates every career in the public 
service or the professions ; it is therefore preeminently 
the school for the aristocracy, for the bureaucracy, 
and for the rich. The real-gymnasium is looked upon 
as essentially inferior to the gymnasium ^ although it 
differs from the gymnasium only in that the course 
in Greek is replaced by mathematics, science, and 
modern languages. It is attended chiefly by the sons 
of the middle class who are looking forward to any 
one of the higher courses of study or the activities to 
which graduates of the real-gymnasium may be ad- 
mitted. The range of these courses and activities is 
limited as compared with that to which graduates of 



124 SECONDARY EDUCATION 

the gymnasium are admitted. The six years* course 
of the real-schule marks it at once as an inferior school 
compared with the gymnasium and real-gymnasium y 
with their nine years' courses. Further, since the 
ancient languages are excluded entirely from this 
course of study, its inferiority, in the opinion of most 
educated Germans, is so great as' to necessitate rigor- 
ous restrictions on the range of the higher courses of 
study, or the career to which a real-schule graduate may 
aspire. These restrictions are, accordingly, much 
greater for him than for the real-gymnasium graduate. 
The elementary school need not be considered at all 
in this connection ; for its graduates are destined to 
be followers, not leaders. They are the predestined 
subordinates, who may not aspire to any profession or 
public career whatever. 

The advocates of the present educational system 
deny that this organization tends to accentuate and 
perpetuate the social classes : they point to the fact 
that the bureaucracy and the professional classes are 
constantly being recruited from persons who sprang 
from the poorer classes — and, of course, such acces- 
sions to the socially superior and directing classes 
do occur. But their number must, necessarily, be 
relatively small ; for the expense attendant on the 
pursuit of a liberal education, such as is provided 
by the secondary schools, is a heavy burden for per- 
sons with small salaries, and is out of the question 



IN AMERICAN LIFE 125 

for laborers. There are, to be sure, scholarships and 
remissions of tuition for meritorious students; but 
these provisions by no means afford adequate facili- 
ties for secondary education to the large number of 
meritorious but poor students who wish to profit 
by it. 

Now I need hardly point out that such a stratifica- 
tion of the school system is utterly repugnant to the 
spirit of American institutions, of which the keynote 
is equal opportunities for all. We are seeking to 
unify and articulate our whole educational endeavor, 
from the primary school to the University. We de- 
cline to promote any artificial stratification of society. 
We justly insist on a system of schools that shall 
minister to the social elevation of every individual 
whose character and achievements, based on disposi- 
tion, industry, and capacity, mark him as a superior 
person — one who, when school life is past, is en- 
titled to a career of leadership among his fellow-men, 
whether as a man, or worker, or citizen and public 
servant. 

Now with this conception of a school system, all 
the parts of which are closely articulated to each 
other and equally accessible to all, and the ideals of 
a democratic society in mind, we are nevertheless, in 
various parts of the country, especially in New Eng- 
land, organizing our public secondary schools so that 
our Classical High, English High, Manual Training 



126 SECONDARY EDUCATION 

High, and, latest of all, the Commercial High Schools 
have often little or no connection with each other. 
In providing the instruction which gives to each of 
these schools its peculiar character we are justly aim- 
ing to meet a distinct need. But what I wish espe- 
cially to point out is this. As long as a certain course 
of study — the course of study -represented in the 
Classical School — affords the exclusive or the pre- 
ferred preparation for college, while the other courses 
of study represented in all the other secondary schools 
do not, — and I fear it will be a long time before 
any other subjects will be regarded as good as Latin, 
Greek, and Mathematics for this purpose, — so long, 
no matter how good intrinsically those other courses 
may be, will the schools which provide those courses 
be relegated to an inferior social rank. Under such 
circumstances those pupils who are not going to col- 
lege, but who nevertheless cherish just social ambi- 
tions, will flock to a school — the Classical School — 
not adapted to their briefer educational career, to 
their own disadvantage and the great loss of society ; 
or they must seek their secondary education in a 
school which is looked upon by their socially supe- 
rior contemporaries as inferior. The result is that 
there are not infrequently many pupils in the classi- 
cal schools who ought, in accordance with their 
capacities and tastes, to be in one of the other high 
schools; and in those other high schools the social 



IN AMERICAN LIFE 12/ 

segregations are such as serve to accentuate the tem- 
porary social distinction between the youth of the 
well-to-do and cultivated classes, who are all or nearly 
all in the Classical School, and the youth of the re- 
maining classes, who are, in more than one sense, not 
in it. That such artificial social segregations are pro- 
moted in New England, at least, by separate Eng- 
lish High, Latin High, and Manual Training High 
Schools, is obvious to any one who will take the 
trouble to visit these schools. For the disparage- 
ment of courses of study consisting of modern sub- 
jects, the colleges are mainly responsible; but for 
promoting the artificial social segregations resulting 
from the establishment of separate secondary schools 
with no interdependent relations, I fear the teachers 
must carry the largest share of the responsibility. 

Now of course one may ask. What of it.? But that 
question is not likely to be asked by one who is in- 
clined to believe, as I do, that such segregations are 
prejudicial to the best interests of American society. 
In my opinion, one of the safeguards of the stability 
and progress of a democratic society is the diffusion 
of common aims and common interests among all 
classes. The most valuable, and potentially the most 
efficient, instrument for diffusing these common aims 
and common interests among the leaders of the people 
is the secondary school. It is the secondary school 
even more than the college, chiefly because its gradu- 



128 SECONDARY EDUCATION 

ates are far more numerous than the college graduates. 
Most of our editors, politicians, skilled mechanics and 
labor leaders, our leading business men, and even the 
great majority of our professional men and women, are 
not college-bred; but they have usually had a second- 
ary-school training. These persons are commonly the 
leaders of the people. The colleges train the leaders 
of these leaders, rather than these leaders themselves. 

Now any school can diffuse common aims and com- 
mon interests in its pupils only by permitting the pupils 
to participate in the pursuits which embody those aims 
and interests. Such participation may be either direct 
or indirect; i.e. the pupils may actually share, under 
the same conditions, the same instruction ; or they may 
come to understand and appreciate, to some extent, the 
value of all subjects by daily intimate association with 
them as a part of the work of the comprehensive insti- 
tution whose privileges all may share; easy access to 
all the instruction of the whole institution being as- 
sumed, and also an administration that promotes out- 
ward social equality, whether the school associations 
thus promoted extend to the homes or not. 

My plea is, therefore, that we shall go no further in 
planning our secondary education so as to consist of 
separate high schools with distinct functions ; but that 
we may organize it so that it may consist of parallel 
and coordinate departments of one comprehensive insti- 
tution — all with the same articulation to the earlier 



IN AMERICAN LIFE 1 29 

work, and so intimately related to each other that a 
constant exchange and interchange may take place 
among the pupils in the separate departments, in ac- 
cordance with the various needs or tastes of each pupil 
as they appear. Otherwise the separate schools re- 
mind us of — they repeat in part — the social stratifi- 
cation of the schools of Europe, with its offensive, more 
or less arbitrary relegation of one pupil to one social 
class, and another to another, in advance of knowledge 
as to which class the pupil really belongs to. 

I have emphasized the (to my mind) undesirable 
social segregations that separate and independent kinds 
of high schools promote. But there is another impor- 
tant consideration that leads to the same conclusion. 
To relegate nearly all of the instruction that tradition- 
ally and really aims, almost wholly, at " general culture " 
to one school, and nearly all the instruction whose chief 
function is to acquaint the pupil with the fundamental 
principles and processes of the mechanical trades or 
of business to another school, is to proceed, on the one 
hand, as if training for immediate usefulness had little 
or no interest for the student of general culture ; and, 
on the other, as if the pursuit of general culture, as 
such, were naturally foreign to the interests of the 
future mechanic or merchant. In either case we would 
commit a fatal error. Of course, in our existing sepa- 
rate schools this is not quite a fair description of the 
situation. All the schools do provide to some extent 

K 



130 SECONDARY EDUCATION 

for general culture. But my point is, that in at least 
two of them the culture element of the training is not 
only necessarily relatively limited in amount, but is, by 
virtue of its subordination to the other purposes of 
these schools, regarded as of essentially less value. It 
is quite as unfortunate to disparage general culture as 
it is to disparage training for immediate usefulness. 

Along with the considerations on the social prob- 
lem of secondary education, I wish, therefore, to lay 
stress on the importance of a full recognition of the 
value and significance of the general course of study 
— the course for general culture — which ought to be 
pursued, in part, at least, by every youth, whether he 
subsequently goes to college or not. That the scope 
of this course should be broad enough to make the 
pupil's school career a progressive participation in 
the varied interests of modern life need not be re- 
asserted. In the secondary school the pupil who 
does not go to college has his last chance at general 
culture — his last chance to acquire the capacity to ap- 
preciate and to react on the resources and the problems 
of modern civilization^ for that is what geiieral culture 
means. 

The general course should accordingly be that 
course in which the other courses are rooted, and 
from which they may diverge. It will, I think, in 
time, include the college preparatory course also; al- 
though, under existing conditions, the preferred col- 



IN AMERICAN LIFE 13I 

lege preparatory course must consist of a certain 
group of subjects which may or may not have been 
chosen by a pupil in accordance with his interests 
and tastes. There are indications that any subjects 
well pursued — i.e. with adequate continuity and in- 
tensity — will ere long be accepted, as they should 
be, as suitable preparation for college work. Until 
that time comes, that important training in choice, 
whether for further education or for the active pur- 
suits of life, to which reference has been made in a 
previous chapter cannot be realized for many pupils. 

No recent developments of our secondary education 
are more important in themselves or possess greater 
general significance than our courses in manual train- 
ing, and, latest of all, our gradually improving com- 
mercial courses. Their great intrinsic importance and 
their general significance are due to their immediate 
bearing, which every one can see, on life's most seri- 
ous purpose, self-support. The other courses do not 
so conspicuously minister to a life of usefulness ; at 
least few pupils in the secondary school can see that 
they do. But here is a body of instruction the sig- 
nificance of which cannot be missed. It prepares for 
work and for leadership among workers. 

Now it is important that the serious purposes of 
life should receive adequate consideration from every 
youth. Preparation for them should seem to him at 
least as honorable and important as a disinterested 



132 SECONDARY EDUCATION 

Study of the arts and sciences for their own sake. 
I would have every pupil imbued with the dignity 
and the necessity of work ; I would have him feel 
the disgrace of accepting something for nothing; I 
would have his self-respect recoil at the idea of liv- 
ing at the expense of his fellow-men, or on his 
inherited patrimony, without deserving his good for- 
tune, even if he does not need to earn it; I 
would have him feel that life is not worth living 
without some worthy form of service to which he 
devotes himself with all the ardor, all the intelli- 
gence, all the skill, with which he may be endowed 
by nature or which he can acquire through training. 
Hence I welcome the introduction into secondary 
education of subjects that are conspicuously useful 
in preparing for immediate self-support. Moreover, 
such courses are valuable for that training in choice 
which I emphasized a while ago ; and I confess also 
that I cherish the hope that the dignity of skilled 
labor and of superior business integrity, insight, and 
power, as well as intellectual resources and power, — 
that all kinds of skilled labor, whether manual, com- 
mercial, or professional, well and faithfully performed, 
— will gradually gain increased dignity and early recog- 
nition through the instruction of young men and 
women who participate for several years, directly or 
by association, to some extent, at least, in prepara- 
tion for all three. 



IN AMERICAN LIFE 1 33 

The problem of the extension of the scope and 
flexibility of our secondary education, as I see it, is 
accordingly, in part, this : we intend that every pupil 
shall participate to some extent in general culture ; 
that for those pupils whose school life terminates at 
the age of eighteen or nineteen, and for all others 
who wish it, there shall be adequate provision for 
courses in manual training which, in addition to their 
general educational value, help to prepare our youth 
for immediate usefulness and ultimate leadership in 
mechanical and industrial pursuits ; and that there 
shall be, similarly, adequate provision for commer- 
cial courses that prepare for immediate and ulti- 
mately superior usefulness in a business career; and 
finally we intend, by the close association of these 
three forms of education, that no one shall miss the 
unifying influence and the inspiration of a share in 
general culture on the one hand, and of the dignity 
and importance of work on the other. In this way 
we may seek to train for participation in general 
culture and for work. 

What provision are we making for those impor- 
tant, though for most persons incidental, duties of 
the citizen — i.e. for training for social insight, in- 
terest, and power } It is not too much to say that 
the group of subjects on which we must rely specifi- 
cally for this purpose — namely, civics, economics, and 
history — is chiefly conspicuous by its absence, or by 



134 SECONDARY EDUCATION 

its very subordinate place in most of our secondary- 
school courses of study. The whole question of 
American citizenship is peculiarly important. We 
are trying in this country an experiment on a colos- 
sal scale; namely, the experiment of giving every citi- 
zen a share in the government, of regarding him as 
competent to make and to administer the laws under 
which we live. No other nation in the world has 
ever assumed that because a man was a human 
being he was by virtue of that fact alone competent 
to legislate about and direct the affairs of organized 
society. Meanwhile our experiment is not wholly 
successful. Indifference to public concerns, false 
ideals of patriotism, and often a perverted concep- 
tion of the meaning of public office, are some of the 
evils against which we have to contend. Neverthe- 
less, with the lessons of history and our own national 
experience, brief as it is, in mind, I am ready to 
declare that every intelligent citizen ought to vote, 
and that he may become competent to be law-maker 
and executive. Our disappointments are merely 
teaching us that a safe voter, legislator, or executive, 
cannot " grow " ; that he can become wise, efficient, 
and just, only on the basis of some understanding 
of the complex and comprehensive problems on 
which he votes, or assumes to legislate, or which he 
is called upon to administer. 

Under such circumstances we may justly expect the 



IN AMERICAN LIFE I35 

secondary school to do its share in arousing interest in, 
and insight into, our institutional life, — our municipal, 
state, and national institutions, our political, industrial, 
commercial, and educational affairs. Accordingly, we 
justly ask that history, civics, economics, — the social 
studies, — shaD receive much fuller recognition in sec- 
ondary-school courses of study than has been accorded 
them hitherto, and that these subjects shall not be 
sundered, but be kept in intimate association. We ask 
that our meagre and inadequate courses in history 
shall really comprise an elementary descriptive soci- 
ology, and the account of the development of the in- 
stitutions of modern society. Instead of consisting 
chiefly of accounts of wars, dynasties, and court 
intrigue, it will deal by preference with the arts and 
occupations of peace, with the history of industry, of 
commerce, of scientific inventions, and ere long, let us 
hope, with the history of art, education, and philan- 
thropy. In all this, righteous wars will have their 
place ; but the war hero, as such, will no longer be the 
sole or even the chief example of moral heroism with 
which to fire the imagination and arouse the spirit of 
emulation of our hero-worshipping and impressionable 
youth. 

But there are other ways in which the school can 
train for citizenship. The school itself, through its 
teachers, may become a participator in the life of the 
community. This means that teachers must identify 



136 SECONDARY EDUCATION 

themselves with public concerns. If a town hall is 
to be built ; if there is to be a new public library ; if 
there are to be new waterworks ; if tenement houses 
are to be torn down and playgrounds for the children 
of the poor are to be provided, the teachers of the 
secondary schools must in some way take part in 
these public affairs. If they have a share in carry- 
ing on public measures, the life of the community 
will flow through the school, and the meaning of citi- 
zenship, its functions, its problems, and its privileges, 
will be brought home to the pupils. Again, those who 
have matters of public concern in charge — the park 
commissioner, the city engineer, or the director of 
some factory — may be invited into the school, and 
may, by lectures, or by informal talks, impart to the 
pupils some comprehension of the interests, civic and 
industrial, amid which they live, and in which they 
will be called upon by and by to carry the burdens 
of social improvement, or of industrial and commer- 
cial progress. 

The school is prone to live too secluded a life in 
the midst of life ; it has been concerned too much 
with its own routine ; its ideal — a high ideal — has 
been, too exclusively, scholarship ; and the other func- 
tions which it has to discharge have been too much 
neglected. So it has come about that the most 
earnest and ambitious teachers have usually de- 
voted themselves to what may be called pure scholar- 



IN AMERICAN LIFE 1 37 

ship too exclusively, and have concerned themselves 
very little about those affairs of life which it is one 
function of education to introduce young people to. 
Through its course of study, through the active partici- 
pation of its teachers in the social interests of the world 
outside the school, and by bringing representatives 
from that world into the school, the school may be 
made a participator in the social, the industrial, the 
commercial, the civic life of to-day; may afford that 
comprehension of the duties and the privileges of a 
citizen which only a participation, however limited, is 
capable of affording. 

In the foregoing considerations I have tried to set 
forth what seem to me to be the just expectations of 
society and of thoughtful teachers with regard to 
secondary education. I do not think that more is 
expected than can be done. I do believe that if we 
persist in treating a youth as if he were a child, he 
will, no doubt, remain a child. But if we treat him 
in accordance with his growing maturity, he will re- 
spond accordingly. I think, therefore, that modern 
secondary education can and should be a refining, in- 
spiring, unifying force in American life; it can and 
should offer the elements of general culture to all 
children and youth who are induced to seek general 
culture through the persuasive influence of a good be- 
ginning made in earlier education ; or who, during the 
period from about twelve to eighteen or twenty years of 



138 SECONDARY EDUCATION IN AMERICAN LIFE 

age, become imbued with a desire for general culture 
from any cause whatever ; it can and should inspire all 
children and youth who share in its opportunities with 
love and respect for all culture that promotes the pro- 
gress and diffusion of truth, beauty, goodness, useful- 
ness, or happiness ; it can and should lead each pupil 
to self -revelation and self-development through the cul- 
tivation of his dominant interests and powers; and, on 
the basis of such revelation and cultivation, it can and 
should inspire, in rich and poor alike, a respect for work, 
in all its forms, and a permanent desire to engage in 
some vocation or worthy form of service when school 
life is past; it can and should be so administered that 
social segregations should not be promoted among chil- 
dren and youth, save on the basis of superiority in 
natural or acquired characteristics, — a superiority at- 
tested by constant superiority of achievements, of dis- 
position, and of conduct ; and it can and should arouse 
and persistently cultivate a desire to gain an insight 
into contemporary social problems — economic, politi- 
cal, educational — with a view to future intelligent and 
helpful participation in trying to shape wisely munici- 
pal, state, and national affairs. 

The endeavor to realize this ideal of modern second- 
ary education requires ardent devotion on the part of 
the teachers, and the intelligent and interested coopera- 
tion of the community. 



VI 



THE PREPARATION OF THE HIGH-SCHOOL 
TEACHER OF MATHEMATICS 



VI 



THE PREPARATION OF THE HIGH-SCHOOL 
TEACHER OF MATHEMATICS 

There is an important sense in which the prepara- 
tion of every teacher is beyond the reach of human 
influences. His preparation has begun before his birth. 
He is either endowed by nature with personal quaUties 
that should forever exclude him from the ranks of the 
teaching profession, or he possesses such qualities as, 
under appropriate training, enable him to overcome the 
inevitable difficulties that will beset his path, and ulti- 
mately to attain varying degrees of usefulness, from 
mediocrity to the highest skill in his art. If he is a 
physical or mental weakling, if he is stolid and heavy, 
if he is indifferent to nature, human nature, and art, 
if he lacks enthusiasm in the pursuit of his subject and 
never feels the glow of conscious mastery, if he has a 
crabbed or irritable disposition, if he is brilliant but 
unsympathetic, if he lacks an interest in his pupil at 
least equal to his interest in his subject, if he has no 
tact, and is lacking in the sense of humor that often 
furnishes the silver lining to an otherwise black cloud 

141 



142 THE PREPARATION OF THE 

of youthful idleness or seeming perversity, — in a word, 
if he is not physically and mentally vigorous, alert, and 
active, if he is not interestedly and healthily responsive 
to the varied interests of life, if he cannot cherish a 
feeling of good will and maintain a hopeful and encour- 
aging attitude in spite of many discouragements and 
some failures, — whatever he may be able to achieve 
in other callings, he ought never to be a teacher. I 
need hardly say that, in what follows, adequate natural 
capacity and a responsive nature are assumed, and that 
my discussion pertains only to the preparation of the 
would-be teacher who possesses these characteristics. 

The preparation needed by every high-school teacher 
is both general and special ; that is to say, it should 
cover the essential elements of a liberal education, and 
special training in that subject or group of closely 
related subjects which the teacher expects to teach ; 
together with enough professional training to show 
him his responsibilities to his pupils as well as to his 
specialty, and to help him to become as good a teacher 
as possible as soon as possible. That a high-school 
teacher should, in general, have profited by an educa- 
tion at least equivalent to that afforded by a good 
American college, ought to be universally recognized. 
Since this is not the case, one must assume either indif- 
ference to or ignorance of the importance of a liberal 
culture for high-school teachers on the part of many 
of those who employ the teachers, or are responsible 



HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER OF MATHEMATICS 143 

for their employment. Under such circumstances, it 
becomes one's duty to do what he can toward influenc- 
ing public opinion on this very important matter. It 
seems worth while, therefore, to point out briefly the 
serious consequences of indifference or ignorance on 
the part of employers of high-school teachers as 
regards the general culture essential to real efficiency. 
It must be borne in mind that high-school pupils 
are no longer little children, uninformed and unsophis- 
ticated. Besides possessing a considerable store of 
general information, they have usually learned to read 
human nature tolerably well where their own interests 
are concerned. Superficial knowledge, and limited 
mental power, narrow views of life, rusticity of man- 
ner, — all of them marks of meagre culture, — rarely 
escape detection in a high school ; and, particularly 
for the brighter and socially superior pupils, offer a 
decided obstacle to the teacher's usefulness, if they 
do not destroy it altogether. It is a serious disad- 
vantage to every high-school pupil, whether he is 
aware of it or not, perhaps even more serious if he 
does not know it than if he does, to have his mental 
horizon determined by the narrow mental horizon of 
his teacher; his intellectual vistas and sympathies 
limited or dwarfed by the inadequate intellectual in- 
sight and want of perspective on the part of his 
teacher; to have his notions of social refinement 
and cultivation unformed, or deformed, or even per- 



144 THE PREPARATION OF THE 

verted, by the uncultivated man or woman who hap- 
pens to be his teacher. The high school supplies to 
most pupils their last chance at these stores of in- 
spiration and guidance, and they should be the very 
best. Such disadvantages to the pupil do not ap- 
pear, and such obstacles to the teacher's success can 
hardly exist, when the general culture and refinement 
of the high-school teachers are sufficient always to 
command the just respect and challenge the regard, 
if not to inspire the imitation, of the best pupils. 
Hence, for a satisfactory equipment, those who have 
tried it will agree, I am sure, that, in general, four 
years of college training are little enough. 

This opinion is strengthened by the reflection that 
there is no period in a young person's life in which 
impressions received produce a more lasting effect, in 
which incipient interests and habits of thought and 
conduct are more likely to be permanently influenced, 
than during the period covered wholly or in part by 
secondary education — the period of adolescence. It 
is often said that the earliest impressions are the most 
lasting, and the earliest training is the most important 
for intellectual and moral development, and for the 
future usefulness and happiness of the individual; 
but I cannot believe this is a true statement of the 
case for most of those pupils whose school career is 
continued into and through the high school. If good 
early training were always followed by equally good 



HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER OF MATHEMATICS 145 

subsequent training, if the child's opportunities for 
growth in knowledge and power were continuous, if 
his moral training and his social environment improved 
with his growth from early childhood through later 
childhood and youth, if his earlier acquisitions were 
really made to serve continuously and progressively 
as the foundation for continuous subsequent growth, 
then the earlier and earliest training would be the 
most important; for it would be the foundation on 
which later development would be most economically 
and securely laid. 

But such conditions of development are rare. The 
cases are not common in which each stage of a 
child's progress is so nicely adjusted to the previous 
one. Such an arrangement of our courses of study 
and our teaching processes is, as yet, too commonly 
rather a vaguely conceived ideal. Moreover, the in- 
stability of the population, the perpetual migration of 
people in this country from one place to another, 
enormously increases the difficulty of approximating 
to such an ideal, even when it is consciously and 
conscientiously aimed at. But suppose that such an 
ideal were generally realized. It would still remain 
true that childhood in its first dozen years or so, 
with its ready adaptability to changing conditions, its 
rapidly changing dominant interests, in a word, its 
instability, would be affected most strongly by its 
latest influences. In my opinion later school life may 



146 THE PREPARATION OF THE 

make good the defects of early training; or it may 
build, on an excellent earlier foundation, a superior 
superstructure. 

If this be true, and I believe it is (in the absence 
of scientific knowledge one can only generalize from 
his own experience and observation), the great im- 
portance of good teaching, wise management, and the 
most wholesome and refining general atmosphere in 
the high school is apparent. In any event, it will 
be admitted, I think, that as the period of adolescence 
approaches, and especially during that period, the in- 
stability above referred to rapidly diminishes. The 
individual gradually emerges. The child becomes a 
youth. This is a critical period in the life of every 
human being. To assume the wise guidance of 
young people during this important period is the 
exalted function of the secondary-school teacher. He 
is to be the sympathetic, discriminating, and vigorous 
guide and leader of boys and girls just developing 
into manhood and womanhood. To be such a guide 
and leader in very truth he must have resources, 
both natural and acquired. The least that should 
be demanded of him is that he shall have taken 
pains to secure an equipment of knowledge that 
will give him broad, sane, and healthy views of 
life, with its duties and its privileges, and liberal in- 
tellectual sympathies, together with a conscious power 
in some one field that enables him to maintain, both 



HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER OF MATHEMATICS 147 

for himself and his pupils, a high standard of achieve- 
ment. Such an equipment every college graduate 
who has made good use of his opportunities may- 
possess. It is not often that one who has not 
profited by such an education can be expected to 
possess it. 

There are special reasons why the teacher of 
mathematics should have a liberal equipment of gen- 
eral culture in addition to special knowledge and 
power in his particular subject. Pure mathematics 
is profound and interesting; but its subject-matter, 
save in its elements, is so remote from the common 
interests of men that its devotees are in constant 
danger of what may be called a professional or 
academic isolation ; and this isolation is almost sure 
to increase with increasing devotion to the subject. 
Pure mathematics has fewer points of contact with 
the ordinary affairs of life than natural science, or 
language, or history, to say nothing of economics 
and government. In this respect it differs from all 
other subjects. Factoring, radicals, and quadratic 
equations ; polygons, parallelopipeds, and spherical 
triangles ; sines, tangents, and trigonometric formulae ; 
the theory of equations, determinants, and complex 
numbers; point and Hne coordinates, involutes, and 
evolutes ; derivatives, differential equations, and elliptic 
functions, — may completely shut out from view the 
living panorama of nature and society in which most 



148 THE PREPARATION OF THE 

men live, and move, and have their being; and from 
which the young, in particular, derive most of their 
incentives and conscious purposes. In my opinion, 
therefore, it is not asking too much that the high- 
school teacher of mathematics should possess the gen- 
eral training that yields extra-vocational, i.e, for him 
extra-mathematical, interests, and enables him to ap- 
preciate their importance. It ought never to be pos- 
sible for the teacher of mathematics, however high 
he may rate the importance of his own subject and 
its beneficial effect on the pupil, to become one who 
measures the capacity of all pupils solely by their 
ability to "do sums and to work problems," and the 
goodness of any course of study chiefly by the work 
in mathematics it prescribes. 

But after all has been said that can be said of the 
necessity of broad general culture for the teacher of 
mathematics, it is still emphatically true that his effi- 
ciency depends ultimately on his special training, on 
his resources in and power over his own subject; for 
it is through that subject that his special duty to 
the pupil is to be done. Either the pupil is to 
receive through him a peculiar insight into the mar- 
vellous system of the external world, some compre- 
hension of the wonderful power and fertility of the 
human mind in one of its fields of activity, a quick- 
ening of his intellectual life through the knowledge 
and insight, the clearness and adequacy, of exposition 



HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER OF MATHEMATICS 149 

of mathematical truths characteristic of a scholarly, 
enthusiastic, well-trained teacher ; or he must forever 
remain indifferent to these interesting, and to some 
minds, fascinating experiences, because both he and 
his teacher move about vaguely in a "world unreal- 
ized," where the intellectual fog never rises, and 
where the road traversed to-day must be re-traversed 
with the same dim uncertainty to-morrow. 

If the teacher of mathematics has little mathe- 
matical ability, and if at the same time he has not 
had sufficient training, he is almost sure to carry on 
his work with a benumbing inadequacy of compre- 
hension and exposition which soon becomes chronic, 
and through which the pupils come to look on mathe- 
matics as a highly artificial subject of little real inter- 
est or practical utility; a subject in which success 
does not depend on common sense and patient study, 
but on ' a certain inborn ingenuity of manipulating 
postulates, hypotheses, and previous propositions, and 
in which absurdities are as valid as realities. 

A certain college student of my acquaintance must 
have had this kind of instruction. She said she had 
studied algebra before coming to college, but she 
had become interested in the subject only when she 
took up equations and "proved things." Whereupon 
I asked her if she had ever seen the paradox by 
which, through a series of equations, any number 
may apparently be proved equal to nothing. As she 



150 THE PREPARATION OF THE 

had never seen it, I showed it to her, securing her 
assent to the several steps as I went on. When we 
arrived at the conclusion, 2 = 0, I handed her the 
paper and looked up with the half-apologetic, half- 
triumphant manner of one who expects after a very 
brief triumph and a rather lame defence to yield the 
point in question. But nothing of the sort happened. 
She merely said, ** That's all right," and handed the 
paper back to me. " But," I said, "how can it be } 
Two cannot be really equal to nothing." " Oh," she 
said, "that's algebra." 

The situation is not much improved, although it is 
quite different, if the teacher has good ability, but 
insufficient training. In that case he is oppressed by 
the consciousness of the heavy demands made on 
him and of his inability for a long time to respond to 
them as he should. The work must be done some- 
how, the classes cannot wait. He is thus obliged to 
carry on a discouraging struggle against tremendous 
odds. Meanwhile, his pupils are the losers, and the 
reputation of the subject suffers. Similar statements 
could, of course, be made with respect to inadequate 
preparation in other subjects as well as mathematics, 
but the immediate consequences are not so conspicu- 
ous. The definiteness and rigor of mathematical rea- 
soning afford a constant and ruthless exposition of the 
teacher's shortcomings — an exposition which in other 
subjects is neither so glaring nor usually so disas- 



HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER OF MATHEMATICS 15 1 

trous. The teacher of mathematics must be a logical 
reasoner and ready in manipulation. If his training 
has left him without these powers, his other mental 
powers will avail him nothing. Either the pupil is 
right or he is wrong. Neither teacher nor pupil can 
escape the consequences of false reasoning or lack of 
skill in handling mathematical expressions. So, too, 
the glimpse the teacher gets of fields unexplored, 
which he vaguely realizes must have an influence on 
the interpretation of the work on which he is en- 
gaged, is a constant intimation of inadequacy, and 
so a source of self-accusation that heightens the 
acute ** misery of conscious weakness " which he is 
sure to feel, and which is one of the most paralyz- 
ing of all the untoward influences that oppress the 
conscientious but meagrely equipped teacher. There 
is no heavier burden than the burden of accepted 
duties that one feels he cannot adequately perform. 

There is, of course, always hope for the able 
teacher inadequately prepared, for he may by dint of 
hard work ultimately achieve at least a moderate 
efliciency, although at the expense of many pupils; 
but there is no hope for the ignorant teacher of poor 
ability, unconscious of his own ignorance. In either 
case the want of adequate preparation, before actual 
service begins, casts its shadow over his entire pro- 
fessional career. 

To teach mathematics well in the high school, it 



152 THE PREPARATION OF THE 

is, therefore, hardly necessary to argue that one 
must have a thorough knowledge of the subject, a 
knowledge that is far in advance of pre-collegiate 
study, i.e. far in advance of a good acquaintance 
with the branches of mathematics usually found in 
the high-school curriculum or such a presentation of 
them as is contained in the usual text-books. It is 
hardly necessary to argue that with an equipment 
limited to pre-collegiate study, the teacher of element- 
ary mathematics is unable to comprehend the relative 
importance of the different phases of his subject. 
He may, and usually does, neglect important aspects 
and magnify trifles. He treats facts and processes 
as ultimate ends in themselves, instead of means to 
ends. He never gets the comprehensive point of 
view from which the subject is unified and gains full 
significance in his own and the pupils' minds. His 
pupils not infrequently learn many things which 
subsequently must be unlearned — an expensive and 
exasperating experience. That he may escape this 
unfortunate situation, that he may, from the start, 
enter on his work well equipped for the demands that 
are to be made on him, I purpose now to inquire, 
What should a good course of study, to be pursued 
by the high-school teacher of mathematics as special 
preparation for his work, comprise .^ 

Bearing in mind that this course of study should 
enable the teacher to appreciate the relative impor- 



HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER OF MATHEMATICS 1 53 

tance of the different phases of his subject and of 
their interdependence throughout, and so enable him 
to select with certainty and wisdom those portions of 
mathematics essential to the elements of a liberal 
education, or for future specialization in mathematics, 
if the pupil's interest and probable career should lead 
him into that field; and also that the teacher should 
know and be able to point out the significance of 
mathematics for the adequate development of power 
over other sciences, it is clear that the teacher's 
preparation must cover both pure and applied mathe- 
matics, and a general training in elementary physical 
science. Only through such knowledge is it possible 
to expect confidently that the teacher will have an 
adequate, a wise, and firm grasp of essentials; and 
also a conviction of the fundamental utility of his 
subject in the pursuit of other sciences and in the 
practical affairs of life; and that he will be able to 
impart to the pupil the scientific interest which is 
born of insight, unified knowledge, and perspective. 

In view of these considerations, I suggest the fol- 
lowing course of study for the special equipment of 
the high-school teacher of mathematics : — 

Advanced algebra, about fifty lessons; theory of 
equations (together with determinants and complex 
numbers), about fifty lessons; solid geometry, about 
fifty lessons ; trigonometry, plane and spherical, about 
fifty lessons ; surveying, about fifty lessons ; calculus, 



154 THE PREPARATION OF THE 

about one hundred lessons; descriptive geometry, 
about fifty lessons; mechanics, about one hundred 
lessons; history of mathematics, about fifty lessons; 
physics (general, with quantitative laboratory work), 
about one hundred lessons ; astronomy, about fifty 
lessons ; chemistry, including mineralogy, about one 
hundred lessons ; application of the calculus to light 
and heat, or to electricity, about one hundred les- 
sons ; history and theory of education, about one 
hundred lessons ; methods, about fifty lessons. 

Such a course of study should give the teacher of 
mathematics the original awakening and impetus, and 
furnish the permanent sources of guidance, without 
which growth and high efficiency are impossible. It 
places the teacher at the centre of his subject, whence 
he can see and use its resources to the best advan- 
tage. The command it gives him over the resources, 
the problems, the historical development, and the 
practical and theoretical utility of elementary mathe- 
matics may be expected to enrich and vitalize his 
teaching. Under a teacher thus equipped, the pupils 
feel that they are dealing with a fertile and a beau- 
tiful subject, and that they have a steady, able, and 
sure guide to the mastery of it. The halting and 
labored procedure, so characteristic of one who is not 
master of the situation, will be wanting ; the pupils 
will perceive a definiteness and directness of aim and 
procedure, which show them how real it all is, how 



HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER OF MATHEMATICS 15$ 

important, interesting, and useful it all is, and how ac- 
cessible it all is to patient study; and, to the mathe- 
matical spirits among them, how fascinating and how 
simple it all may become. Such a course of study 
will make it impossible for the teacher of elementary 
mathematics to regard high-school algebra, geometry, 
and trigonometry as " higher mathematics," but he 
will nevertheless have a just and high regard for these 
subjects, and will address himself to teaching them 
accordingly. 

The teacher who has taken such a course of study 
will not be likely to teach nonsense about negative 
numbers or about imaginaries in elementary algebra. 
What he does teach about them the pupils will not 
have to unlearn at some future time. He will not 
believe that he has done his duty when he has led 
the pupils to solve simple equations with numerical 
coefficients, and allowed them to regard the literal 
equation as exceptional, and therefore entitled to only 
passing notice ; he will not feel that the last word 
has been said on the significance of systems of equa- 
tions when the pupils have learned the three common 
processes of elimination, and have applied their knowl- 
edge to solving the usual highly artificial problems of 
the elementary algebras; he will not be able to re- 
gard the solution and discussion of the quadratic equa- 
tion as virtually the end of achievement in algebraic 
analysis, and so on. So in geometry, he cannot be 



156 THE PREPARATION OF THE 

satisfied with exactness of language only : he must 
have good logic as well; he will attach due impor- 
tance to the mastery of the propositions proved and 
the problems solved in the text-book, but he will 
never feel that the mastery of these propositions, 
with only an occasional "extra," gives pupils the 
comprehension and power they ought to gain from 
the subject; and so on. He will have learned that 
the branches of elementary mathematics have impor- 
tant interrelations, and will provide for a proper rec- 
ognition of these interrelations in his teaching, 
thereby enhancing the interest and the comprehension 
of each. These are commonplaces, I know; my ex- 
cuse for laying stress on them is that their significance 
is too often disregarded in practice. 

That analytical geometry should form a part of 
this course of study is obvious. The knowledge of 
the conic sections which it affords and the great ex- 
tension it gives to earlier conceptions of geometry 
are so important, the relations between algebra and 
geometry which it reveals are so interesting and valu- 
able, and the facility in handling mathematical expres- 
sions which it cultivates is so useful, that every lover 
of mathematics would insist on a training in analytics ; 
and every teacher should possess this training for its 
influence on his teaching. 

Similarly, little argument is needed to justify the 
appearance of the calculus and its applications in 



HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER OF MATHEMATICS 1 57 

this course of study. The calculus is of such value 
to the mathematician as an instrument of research and 
as a basis of other sciences, that it is simply indis- 
pensable. For the teacher of elementary mathematics 
it throws such a flood of light on principles and 
extends their significance, both in pure and appUed 
mathematics, and develops the mathematical skill 
already acquired to such an extent, that it is of in- 
estimable value in helping him to develop compre- 
hension, interest, and skill on the part of his pupils. 
To illustrate the influence of the calculus on the 
equipment of the teacher, I need only refer to its 
effect on his power over the theory of limits; to the 
insight afforded by the applications of the calculus 
to analytics; to the facility in manipulation, cultivated 
from the very beginning, in the processes of differen- 
tiation and integration, and in the applications of the 
calculus to analytics already referred to; and to the 
appreciation the calculus affords of the utility of 
mathematics through its applications to mechanics, 
and to the study of light, heat, or electricity. 

This course of study provides also for an acquaint- 
ance with the history of mathematics. It is strange 
that this interesting subject should have been neglected 
so long in this country. To this day I know of no col- 
lege or university among us that offers a course in the 
history of mathematics. This is all the more strange 
when we think of the addition to the teacher's resources 



158 THE PREPARATION OF THE 

comprised in a knowledge of this subject. Quite 
apart from the clearer insight which such a knowl- 
edge gives into principles and processes — which is, of 
course, important — it should be borne in mind that the 
history of a subject is a part of the history of culture, 
and so an important part of the history of civilization. 
The inspiring victories of peace, the intellectual and 
moral conquests of the race, have, for most minds, at 
least as high an interest as the victories of war. The 
history of brilliant discoveries or of the patient en- 
deavor by which men have slowly worked out a science 
or a system of thought may therefore be employed to 
introduce into the teaching of every science a human 
element of great value ; and especially into a science 
which, like mathematics, is necessarily formal and 
abstract. When the discoverer of a proposition is 
named, and some of the circumstances of his career are 
added, a wholly new interest is added to the geometri- 
cal truth which before was known only as abstracted 
from all human concerns — it existed only in the book ; 
now it is recognized as belonging to life. 

So, too, the physical sciences — astronomy, physics, 
chemistry, and mineralogy — add so much to the sig- 
nificance of pure mathematics, and contribute such 
teaching resources, that no mathematician and no 
teacher would wish to dispense with a knowledge of 
them. I have, therefore, included these sciences in the 
course of study needed by the teacher of mathematics. 



HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER OF MATHEMATICS 159 

Finally, every science has an important practical 
utility which justly adds to the value attached to it by 
its devotees and by the world in general. An appeal 
to this practical utility is of constant use in teaching, 
because it is sure to be appreciated by the pupils, 
and (when occasion requires it) by their parents. I 
have therefore added descriptive geometry, astronomy, 
surveying, and introduction to navigation, to the course 
of study; these subjects comprise those important 
practical applications of elementary mathematics which 
the mathematician needs to know, and which every one 
can appreciate. 

Thus far I have been dwelling on the scholarship 
required for the teacher's outfit in mathematics. This 
is, of course, because scholarship is fundamental. But 
it is obvious that scholarship and the power to use 
scholarship effectively in teaching are two very different 
things. Hence, the teacher should have a general pro- 
fessional training, including, but by no means limited 
to, instruction in method. The professional training 
should cover enough of the theory and history of edu- 
cation to determine, from the very beginning, a pro- 
fessional interest and point of view on the part of the 
teacher, in addition to his interest in his subject. It 
should enable him once for all to attain the conception 
that education is a rationalized endeavor, whose aim is 
the appropriate development of a human being, and its 
adaptation to the civilization into which he is born ; and 



l60 THE PREPARATION OF THE 

whose means are general culture and, in his hands, the 
science of mathematics in particular. It should include 
also some instruction in methods of teaching mathe- 
matics. Prior to practice, it is not profitable, in my 
opinion, to spend much time on the details of teaching 
any subject. The most valuable instruction in the 
details of the method of teaching any subject is that 
which proceeds pari passu with practice. Such instruc- 
tion is, in most cases, impossible. What, then, should 
the instruction in methods comprise } 

The student's course in educational theory should 
have given him a conception of the educational value 
of mathematics, i,e, what mathematics may do for the 
pupil, and what, by no possibility, can be got from it. 
Instruction in methods should make sure that such a 
conception of the educational value of mathematics 
defines the teacher's ultimate aim, the aim that under- 
lies and permeates all his work. Such an aim is essen- 
tial to an adequate treatment of the whole subject. 
It relegates all the phases of the subject to their proper 
places and assigns to each phase its proper emphasis ; 
and it makes clear the importance of bringing home to 
the pupil the interdependence of the several branches. 
Instruction in method should also make clear the im- 
portance of a definite aim or definite aims in each reci- 
tation, i.e. of a certain point or certain points to be made 
in to-day's work, and of the importance of permitting 
and requiring the pupils to make these points them- 



HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER OF MATHEMATICS l6l 

selves, so far as possible ; and finally it should suggest 
a few modes of procedure — devices of class manage- 
ment and presentation — sufficient to serve the young 
teacher as a basis for success in his first lessons, and 
for working out his own devices as fast as he needs 
them. For such instruction about fifty exercises, di- 
vided as occasion may render desirable, between alge- 
bra, geometry, and trigonometry, are enough. To this 
instruction should be added as much study as possible 
of the methods of one or more good teachers in their 
class-rooms. 

Of course, the teacher's preparation for his work 
cannot be completed, once for all, prior to service. 
That the teacher must continue to be a learner, if he 
would win and maintain a high efficiency, is eminently 
true of the teacher of mathematics. The nature of 
the subject is such that it easily lends itself to routine 
treatment. But such treatment means death to effi- 
ciency. The teacher's intellectual sympathies must 
be kept alive by continual efforts to overcome diffi- 
culties similar to those experienced by his pupils. The 
teacher who ceases to make progress, and is content 
with his past acquisitions, and his collections of solved 
problems, has stopped growing, and ought to be re- 
tired. 

It is hardly necessary to add that every teacher 
should be a reader of our three or four leading edu- 
cational journals, and that the teacher of mathematics 

M 



1 62 THE PREPARATION OF THE 

cannot afford to dispense with the reading of two or 
three of the current mathematical journals. Of course 
few teachers would find the whole of each issue of 
these journals either interesting or profitable. But 
there is enough in each issue to repay careful atten- 
tion. They extend the teacher's professional horizon 
and keep him abreast of the times in educational move- 
ments ; and the mathematical journals promote his 
growth in his own subject by acquainting him from 
issue to issue with the progress his subject is making 
through the achievements of his fellow-workers. More- 
over, both the non-mathematical and the mathematical 
journals constitute a source of valuable information con- 
cerning the respective merits of teaching resources, new 
and old — the text-books or other books on his sub- 
ject ; and he will find frequent discussions of aims and 
methods of presentation that serve as a constant means 
of clarifying his own views and improving his own 
methods — all this, of course, whether he agrees with 
the opinions expressed in a paper on the teaching of 
mathematics, or in some book review, or not. These 
sources of information and inspiration are used far too 
little. The present generation of high-school teachers, 
with the exceptions of the principals, is not given to 
much reading of educational literature, even the best. 

In this chapter I have endeavored to describe briefly 
what seems to me a good preparation for the high- 
school teacher of mathematics. That I have described 



HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHER OF MATHEMATICS 163 

a preparation that most high-school teachers, at present 
in service, have not enjoyed, I know. That it is ex- 
ceedingly important that such equipment should be 
increasingly insisted on before the teacher is per- 
mitted to begin his work, I firmly believe. 



VII 

THE STUDY OF EDUCATION AT 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 



VII 

THE STUDY OF EDUCATION AT 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

Education, as a subject deserving serious study, 
occupies, to-day, a place not unlike that held by the 
mother-tongue only a few years ago. It has been 
but a short time since English was a very subordi- 
nate subject in our colleges and secondary schools. 
The educational value of the mother-tongue was, 
commonly, not recognized. It was taken for granted 
that one who had spoken his own language from in- 
fancy and had employed it daily in the pursuit of 
all his intellectual acquisitions, including perhaps a for- 
eign language or two, must, incidentally, and without 
any special training, have learned a great deal about 
this instrument of all his acquisitions ; must have 
learned to use his mother-tongue with ease, accuracy, 
and vigor, and must have learned to love and appre- 
ciate its literature. In time it was learned, however, 
that the facts failed to justify this remarkable assump- 
tion. It was seen, at last, that neither the haphazard 
training of experience and environment, nor the use 

167 



l68 THE STUDY OF EDUCATION 

of the mother-tongue in intellectual acquisition, could 
be trusted, without special training, to develop an 
adequate command of the mother-tongue itself ; and 
that the treasures of English literature, with their 
vast influence on aims and character, in most 
instances, did not reach the young at all. With 
the recognition of these facts, the indifference with 
which the study of English was regarded could not 
last. To-day, English has a respectable place in the 
programmes of most high schools and academies. 
In the best colleges it has won an honorable place. 
Not so the study of education. Until recently 
education has been studied only in normal schools 
for the training of primary and grammar school teach- 
ers. Up to the present time, I know of no secondary 
school in which at least the history of education is 
studied. College and university courses for the study 
of education are still quite generally regarded as 
purely professional courses, designed only for those 
who intend to teach. The idea that education, in its 
historical, theoretical, and practical phases, deserves to 
be studied, and to some extent should be studied, by 
all college students, irrespective of their future pro- 
fession, is still quite as novel as was the demand 
which was made repeatedly and ultimately heeded 
some years ago, that the mother-tongue deserves to 
be carefully studied by all persons seeking a liberal 
education. 



AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY 1 69 

Just as it was at one time deemed superfluous to 
study English, so it is still thought superfluous to 
study education. Although it is recognized univer- 
sally that on the education of the young the future 
welfare of individuals and of nations depends and, 
consequently, that the education of the young is the 
most important duty the present generation owes to 
the next; although it is acknowledged that education 
underlies all the activities of the race, — yet the study 
of this important activity itself is still regarded by 
the non-professional student with indifference. 

Contrary to what would naturally be expected, 
this apathy regarding the study of education has 
been most characteristic of those who were most 
liberally educated. Until recently the attitude of 
many college-bred teachers in secondary schools, 
and of many college professors toward courses in 
education, was, in general, one of indifference, some- 
times of aggressive opposition. Naturally, the stu- 
dents have shared the indifference of the professors. 
Even for future teachers, for men who should be 
thoroughly equipped at all points for the exigencies 
of their future profession, it has been doubted that 
instruction in education and teaching could be of 
real value. Indeed, such value was positively de- 
nied. The opinion was current that no amount of 
preliminary study of the problems and processes 
involved in education could improve the teacher's 



I/O THE STUDY OF EDUCATION 

work. It was held that the complex activities 
of a city school system could not be studied and 
understood, to any respectable degree, without set- 
ting the student to teaching a school ; without plung- 
ing him in medias res^ where, it may be remarked 
in passing, his professional horizon would be limited 
by his grade or his school. According to the same 
view, the important questions pertaining to the choice 
of subject-matter and to the order and distribution of 
the subjects in a course of study could only be satis- 
factorily answered while the teacher was wholly ab- 
sorbed in teaching some particular subject, or doing 
the work of a particular grade. The general prin- 
ciples of a method of teaching could not be formu- 
lated because every man must have his own method, 
method being confused with manner. The important 
question with what aim^ could not be profitably con- 
sidered until, after years of wasteful groping and 
experimenting, each teacher had, consciously or un- 
consciously, formulated an aim for himself. The 
experience of the past, it was held, in formulating 
and testing educational theories and practices, unlike 
the past experience of the race in all other respects, 
had no value in helping the parent and teacher of 
to-day to avoid useless experiments and false theo- 
ries. In other words, in education there is no lesson in 
the accumulation of past experience, everything must 
be done over again from the beginning ; Plato, Quintil- 



AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY 171 

ian, Bacon, Comenius, Locke, Rousseau, Pestalozzi, 
Froebel, Herbart, and a host of modern workers 
in the field of education have no message to hu- 
manity, as regards education, worth attending to. 
^The special study of children, questions of school 
hygiene, school architecture, the comparative study 
of city, state, and foreign school systems, — all these 
things have no value to an ambitious and earnest 
man who looks forward to teaching as his life-work. 
Thus, it was held that the political history of nations 
but not the history of education ; philosophy and ethics 
and psychology, but not the application of them to 
the development of a complete manhood and woman- 
hood; natural science, but not the natural history of 
children ; the study of existing political institutions, 
and a formative social science, but not of existing 
educational institutions and of a formative educa- 
tional science — special researches in every depart- 
ment of human thought and activity — were profitable, 
save in the domain of education and teaching. 

It was in the nature of things that such opinions 
regarding the study of education and the professional 
training of teachers should not endure. They are 
passing away. pTo-day, no subject occupies a more 
important place in the minds of the educated public 
than the aims, means, and methods of education. 
The discussion of educational questions is no longer 
confined to professional books and journals, but forms 



172 THE STUDY OF EDUCATION 

a part of the matter offered to the general public in 
the current magazines, and even in the daily papers. 
Such questions have a universal interest, for educa- 
tional problems have to be solved in every home, as 
well as in every school and school system. Finally, 
in the colleges and universities, the old indifference 
has given place to active interest, and the establish- 
ment of departments or of courses for the study of 
education and teaching has naturally followed.^^ 

The first university departments of education were 
the direct result of a demand for better trained 
teachers for our secondary schools (high schools and 
academies). This was not and is not a legal demand. 
In the United States there has never been, and 
there is not to-day, any law requiring that teachers in 
secondary schools shall study their profession before 
attempting to discharge its duties. It is true that 
some superintendents and principals, and at least one 
large city, decline to admit to the examinations of 
candidates for positions in their schools university 
men without experience, who have not had " a satis- 
factory course in pedagogy." But the number of 
such superintendents and principals is small, and 
Boston is the only city known to the writer which 
requires either experience or professional training as 
a sine qua non. Most cities require no examinations 
whatever of university men who seek positions as 
teachers in their schools. 



AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY 173 

^ut the educational awakening of the past two 
decades has roused, first of all, the professional con- 
sciousness of many experienced teachers; then of 
intelligent and influential superintendents of schools ; 
and finally of a few university professors and excep- 
tional lay members of the community. It has become 
clear to such men that too many excellent university 
graduates are poor teachers. Moreover, a very little ex- 
perience in the class-room has sufficed to reveal their 
pedagogical needs to many earnest young teachers 
who leave the university as specialists in mathe- 
matics, or natural science, or language, but without 
any pedagogical training; and such a revelation has 
come to a rapidly increasing number of young spe- 
cialists not blinded by pedantry or egotism, when 
subject, as has been the case in the recent past, to 
the constantly growing demands of the community 
and of their own newly roused professional superiors.\j 

Both classes of men — university students about to 
become teachers, and teachers already in service who 
have come to feel the need of pedagogical training — 
have, therefore, turned for help to our universities. 
And the universities, notably our state universities, 
have responded to this call for help by establishing 
chairs or departments of pedagogy. 

It was natural that the first departments or courses 
for the study of education in the universities of the 
United States should limit their endeavors to the 



174 THE STUDY OF EDUCATION 

pedagogical training of the class-room teacher; for 
the ability to teach successfully is, for every teacher, 
not less important than sound scholarship ; and this 
ability, as has already been said, too many university 
men who became teachers did not possess. I am not 
now concerned with the extent to which the endeavor 
to help university men to become better teachers was 
realized. I have no doubt that what was actually 
realized left much to be desired. But .the aim was 
clear: to provide for the university man the peda- 
gogical training which he and many generations of 
university men like himself — scholarly, but without 
pedagogical enlightenment — had long needed to mini- 
mize the blunders of inexperience, furnish the guid- 
ance that should insure intelligent self-criticism, and 
afford a hopeful expectation of continuous growth in 
pedagogical skill. 

Such an aim is and will remain a great gain to our 
educational resources; but it is not enough. The 
educational development of the last twenty years has 
brought to light at least two other needs which the 
university can and should meet. It has become ap- 
parent that the proper organization and wise, not to 
say decent, administration of our city and district 
school systems requires that the men who become 
our principals and superintendents of schools should 
possess far better preparation for the duties they have 
to discharge than most of them have hitherto enjoyed. 



^" AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY 175 

Most of our superintendents, and nearly all our prin- 
cipals (of elementary not of secondary schools), are 
men whose general education was obtained in our 
common schools, and whose professional training, if 
they have any, was obtained in the existing normal 
schools. They are therefore men of limited general 
and professional training, although they are usually 
teachers of experience and earnest men. 

i-The importance, the difficulty, and the range of 
the duties of the principals and superintendents of 
schools in our rapidly growing communities have 
come to be recognized; and this recognition has been 
followed by the demand for a higher general culture 
and a deeper and more comprehensive professional 
training than the elementary schools, supplemented 
by the normal schools, could furnish. Moreover, 
as it usually happens that the principal of a high 
school and most of its teachers are college or univer- 
sity bred men and women, while, often, the superintend- 
ent of the school system, of which the given school 
is a part, is not, the desirable cooperation between 
the superintendent and the high school is too often 
rendered difficult, and sometimes impossible. Hence 
the demand has arisen that only men of university 
education, of sufficient practical experience as teachers 
and appropriate professional training, shall be eligible 
to appointment as principals and superintendents. 
This demand is by no means universal, yet it exists ; 



176 THE STUDY OF EDUCATION 

and it is happily becoming apparent that advance- 
ment to the higher positions in the teaching profession 
without the broader general culture and professional 
training just referred to is becoming increasingly rarer 
and more difficult. Successful and ambitious teachers 
who look forward to promotion as principals and 
superintendents of schools are, therefore, naturally 
turning to the university for the training which they 
need to enable them to compete successfully for all 
the higher positions in the profession. 

Again, it has become evident that a more intelligent 
cooperation between the community and the teachers 
than has hitherto been the rule is necessary to promote 
sure and steady educational progress. An undiscrimi- 
nating or exaggerated optimism, or cheerful indiffer- 
ence, on the one hand, and a meddlesome interference, 
on the other, have usually characterized the attitude 
of our communities toward their schools in the past. 
And the dangers of self-glorification or of ignorant ob- 
structionism are by no means lessened in times of rapid 
change, like the present. Sure and steady progress 
and helpful cooperation require, on the part of the com- 
munity, a more intelligent appreciation of the difficult 
problems involved in education than we have hitherto 
had. Such cooperation and such appreciation of edu- 
cational endeavor by the general public can, like all 
other social improvements, be best promoted by enlist- 
ing the active interest of the leaders of the community. 



AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY 177 

But, unfortunately, there is a great lack of leaders and 
intelligent cooperators. There has been and there 
still is too much indifference among the leaders of 
the community with respect to its educational affairs, 
and this indifference is due, as is usually the case with 
indifference, to ignorance ; in this case, ignorance of 
the scope and importance of education as a social force. 

In my opinion, the university can do much to dispel 
this ignorance and indifference. A considerable range 
of social studies is now offered to university students, 
whatever their future vocation may be, in order to 
acquaint them with the organization and functions of 
society, and to implant in them the permanent interest 
in social affairs which such acquaintance naturally 
arouses ; and this is as it should be. But among these 
social studies education, one of the most important 
functions of society, has been ignored. It is not to be 
expected that a student who does not intend to teach 
will study education to the same extent and in the same 
detail as a future teacher. But the general principles 
of education, and some of the important problems in- 
volved in the organization and administration of city 
and state educational systems, would be of interest to 
him, and they are important to all liberally educated 
men. Such men, at no distant day, usually become lead- 
ers, or, at least, active participators in public affairs. 
When the best men of the community become distinctly 
conscious of the benefits of good education, and really 

N 



1/8 THE STUDY OF EDUCATION 

solicitous about securing good schools, it will be possible 
to shut out self-seeking politicians and other self-seekers 
from the school committees, and obstructive or meddle- 
some interference with educational progress by stupid 
or ignorant members of school committees will be rare. 

From this point of view the recognition of education 
as a suitable subject of university study for all students, 
at least in its history and theory, and as a function of 
society, seems to me of great importance to the educa- 
tional interests of the United States^; and at Harvard 
University there has been a constant endeavor to 
disseminate this recognition among the students ever 
since the courses in education were established. Such 
courses were established at Harvard University in 1891. 
From what has already been said it is clear that the 
aim from the outset has been broader than the prepara- 
tion of the class-room teacher. The aim of the depart- 
ment includes such preparation and emphasizes its 
importance, but is by no means limited to it. 

When the department was founded, nearly eight 
years ago, only four students elected the courses 
offered. But the number of students has steadily in- 
creased from year to year, until, at the present time 
(1899), about one hundred and forty students, more 
than half of them graduates, are enrolled in the several 
courses in education. Every year some of the students 
electing these courses come to the University expressly 
to study education. Such students are university men 



AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY 1 79 

in service as teachers, who have obtained a year's leave 
of absence, or teachers in service in the vicinity of the 
University, or teachers from various parts of the United 
States who have resigned their positions for the sake of 
a year's further study at the University, with a view 
to personal growth and professional advancement. It 
is gratifying to be able to state also that a few students 
who do not intend to teach elect some of the courses in 
education every year. Such men are interested in edu- 
cation just as they are interested in government, politi- 
cal economy, history, and the whole range of social 
studies generally. 

Explicitly stated, the general aim of the courses in 
education at Harvard University is threefold, as follows : 

1. To discuss education as an important function of 
society as well as of the individual, and, hence, of inter- 
est to all university students whether they intend to 
become teachers or not. 

2. To offer to university students who look forward 
to teaching as their profession the necessary professional 
training for their vocation, and to teachers already in 
service professional inspiration and guidance. 

3. To offer to university men who have already had 
experience as teachers, and to all other teachers of suit- 
able age and attainments, appropriate professional 
training for future usefulness as principals and super- 
intendents of schools. 

The courses cover the history of education, an intro- 



l80 THE STUDY OF EDUCATION 

duction to educational theory, the organization and 
management of public schools and academies and of 
city school systems, practice teaching, methods of teach- 
ing secondary-school subjects, and a Seminary, for the 
most advanced students for the special study of current 
educational problems. 

Two of these courses are introductory and general ; 
the remaining courses are professional in character. 
The first two courses serve to acquaint the general 
student, who does not intend to teach, but who is in- 
terested in education as an important function of 
society, with the history of education, with its prob- 
lems, and with such generally accepted principles as 
may serve to guide and clarify his further study of 
the subject ; at the same time they afford an appro- 
priate introduction to the remaining courses which 
are intended to provide the essential preliminary pro- 
fessional training for those students who intend to 
become teachers in high schools and academies, or 
principals or superintendents of schools. 

Through the courtesy of school officers and teachers 
in the vicinity of the University many schools are 
open for repeated inspection and prolonged study to 
University students who are pursuing these profes- 
sional courses. In particular, through arrangements 
made with four neighboring cities, students have 
special opportunities to teach for practice under direc- 
tion. 



AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY l8l 

The following brief descriptions indicate the gen- 
eral nature of the courses offered : — 

1. Introduction to Educational Theory. — Discussion 
of Educational Principles. — Lectures, prescribed read- 
ing, essays, and discussions. 

The special aim of this course is to show that edu- 
cation is a rationalized endeavor rather than a mere 
routine, and to make a critical examination of gen- 
erally accepted educational principles. 

2. TheL History of Educational Theories and Practices. 
— Lectures, prescribed reading, and essays. 

The special aim of this course is to enable the 
student to become acquainted with the educational 
aims and practices of the past, and with the most 
important educational classics, thus giving him a 
foundation for the criticism of present theories and 
practices in the light of their historical evolution and, 
incidentally, much general direction for the actual 
work of teaching. 

3. Organization and Management of Public Schools 
and Academies and of City School Systems. — Courses 
of study, supervision, and teaching. 

The special aims of this course are: (i) to enable 
all students to become familiar with and to under- 
stand the organization and administration of schools 
and school systems through direct observation and 
comparative study; (2) to provide for young gradu- 
ates and other students of suitable age and attainments 



l82 THE STUDY OF EDUCATION 

an opportunity to acquire the art of teaching through 
study and practice ; and (3) to provide for more ad- 
vanced students who have already had experience 
as teachers special preparation for the work of princi- 
pals and superintendents of schools. 

The course is carried on in two sections in ac- 
cordance with the attainments, previous experience, 
and aims of the students. One section comprises 
those students who have had no experience in teach- 
ing. For the students of this section opportunities 
to teach for practice have been secured in the four 
neighboring cities, as mentioned above. Each stu- 
dent is expected to teach not less than tivo hours per 
week for half a year. The other section consists 
of the more advanced students — usually experienced 
graduates — who resort to the University for profes- 
sional study in order to qualify themselves for more 
efficient service as principals or superintendents of 
schools. For the members of this section abundant 
opportunity is provided for systematic comparative 
study of schools, school systems, and teaching. 

4. Methods of teaching Latin^ Greeks English^ Ger- 
man, French, History, in Elementary and Secondary 
Schools. 

5. Methods of teaching Mathematics, Physics, Chem- 
istry, Physical Geography, Botany and Zoology, Physi- 
ology, in Elementary and Secondary Schools. - — Lectures, 
practical exercises, discussions, theses. 



AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY 183 

The aim of Courses 4 and 5 is to acquaint the student 
with the planning and the conducting of class work 
under the conditions existing in public schools and 
academies. The instruction is given, under the gen- 
eral direction of the University Professor of Educa- 
tion/ by college teachers and by persons engaged in 
teaching in secondary schools. 

6. Pedagogical Se^ninary, — Subject for the year : 
Contemporary Problems in Education. — Lectures, 
essays, discussions. 

This course is intended for the most advanced 
students only. Its special aim is to offer to experienced 
teachers special opportunities for the investigation, 
under direction, of selected contemporary problems in 
education. Each student is required from time to 
time to present the results of his investigation to the 
entire Seminary for detailed criticism and discussion. 
Much importance is attached to these reports and the 
discussions based on them. 

The courses named above are arranged in two 
groups, — "For Undergraduates and Graduates," and 
" Primarily for Graduates." In the first group are 
placed the courses which are introductory in character, 
and intended for non-professional and professional 

^ Courses 4 and 5 will be withdrawn after 1898-99. The several 
departments of the University have been asked to establish extended 
courses in methods. One department, the department of the classics, 
has already agreed to offer next year a course in "The Methods and 
Equipment of a Teacher of Classics in Secondary Schools." 



1 84 THE STUDY OF EDUCATION 

students alike. These are the first two courses de- 
scribed above. Any undergraduate in either of the 
two upper classes, who is interested in education, 
is encouraged to take these two introductory courses ; 
and since it usually happens that graduate students 
and most teachers now in service have not studied 
either the history or theory of education, such stu- 
dents also are advised to take these courses. The 
second group comprises all the remaining courses. 
These are intended primarily for professional stu- 
dents, i.e. for graduate students who intend to be- 
come teachers, or principals, or superintendents of 
schools. Two instructors conduct these courses ; one 
has the rank of " Assistant Professor " and the other 
has the rank of " Instructor." The assistant professor 
is the senior teacher and head of the department. 

No student can profitably attempt the work of all 
these courses in a single year. In general, two, or, at 
most, three of these courses are quite enough for 
any student at any one time. One of the introductory 
courses (i or 2), and one or two of the professional 
courses are usually chosen by the best students. 

It will be noticed that in the descriptions of the 
courses reference is made to ** lectures," ** discussions," 
" essays or theses," ** reports," and "prescribed reading." 
The terms "lectures," "discussions," "prescribed read- 
ing," explain themselves. " Essays " and " reports " 
may need a few words of explanation. Much written 



AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY 185 

work is required of all the students, and this written 
work takes the form of essays and reports on pre- 
scribed reading or assigned topics. One or two details 
of the management of these courses will show how 
much importance is attached to the essays and 
reports. 

In the course in the History of Education, each 
student is required, once a month, to submit an essay 
of about three thousand words on some period of edu- 
cational history, or on the work of some educational 
reformer, that has been treated in the lectures or 
assigned for special study by the instructor. Some of 
these essays are reviewed by the instructor in the class- 
room and may form the basis of class-room discussion 
by the students. Examples of the subjects treated in 
these essays are : " Education in Greece in the Time of 
Pericles ; " " The Benedictine Age ; " ** Vittorino da 
Feltre ; " " Richard Mulcaster ; " ** The Development 
of Education for the People." 

In the course in Educational Theory the required 
essays are not so numerous ; they are intended to 
require the students to clarify their minds on some 
fundamental principles of education, and the essays 
are subsequently made the basis of class-room dis- 
cussion by instructor and students. Examples of 
assigned subjects for the essays of this course are 
"What should be the Scope and Character of Peda- 
gogical Training for University Students ?'* *' Educa- 



1 86 THE STUDY OF EDUCATION 

tion as a Function of Society ; " '* A Discussion of 
the Subjects in the School Course of Study with 
Respect to (a) their Psychological Value, (d) their 
Social Value ; " "A Plan for the Treatment of Some 
School Subject for Several Lessons with Reference to 
Aims and Methods." 

It will be seen that the course in the Organization 
and Management of Schools and Teaching constitutes 
the centre of all the professional work. The written 
work in this course consists of frequent short essays, 
of weekly reports, throughout the year, on visits of 
inspection to schools, at first detailed, then briefer, 
and of an extended thesis on a city school system, 
submitted at the end of the year. The short essays 
are discussions of certain chapters of two well-known 
books on teaching and school management, namely. 
Fitch's "Lectures on Teaching," and Barnett's "Teach- 
ing and Organization " ; critical summaries of papers 
in the Educational Review (New York) on the Organ- 
ization and Management of Schools, and discussions 
of portions of the reports of the Committee of Ten 
and the Committee of Fifteen on Secondary and Ele- 
mentary School Studies respectively. The reports of 
visits of inspection are discussed with the students in 
the class-room by the instructor. Early in the year 
— toward the end of the first month — the students 
begin to visit schools ; at first under the guidance of 
an instructor, later independently. The dense popu- 



AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY 1 87 

lation in the midst of which the University is situated 
sustains a great number of schools, and our students 
have thus far been courteously welcomed as visitors 
in nearly all of them. This gives the students an 
important and greatly prized opportunity to study 
schools and school systems in detail. The reports 
on this study are the reports of visits of inspection 
referred to above. 

Students in this course are permitted to teach for 
practice in the schools of four cities in the vicinity 
of the University by an arrangement with the teachers 
and school authorities in these cities.^ This practice 
teaching is under the general direction of the head 
of the Department of Education of the University, 
and the special direction of the superintendents and 
principals in the several cities. When a student be- 
gins to teach, he teaches some one class continu- 
ously, from two to six hours per week, for about 
half a year; and he is entirely responsible for the 
progress of the pupils in the class which he teaches. 
His teaching is inspected and criticised by the teacher 
in general charge of the class, and by the University 
instructors, sometimes also by his fellow-students. 
Since Harvard University is in no way connected 
with the state or any city school system, this arrange- 

1 The University admits to its courses, free of charge, as many teachers 
from a city as there are students teaching in the schools of that city. Not 
more than ten students may teach in any one city during the year. 



1 88 THE STUDY OF EDUCATION 

ment has been made possible only through the courtesy 
of the teachers and school authorities in our vicinity. 
But the arrangement has now been in force for more 
than two years, and there is every reason to believe 
that it will continue. 

The extended thesis referred to above is an impor- 
tant piece of work on which much time and labor are 
expended. The student begins it by making a compara- 
tive study of the organization and administration of 
at least two city school systems.^ He provides him- 
self with the printed documents pertaining to the 
school systems he wishes to study, and, under the 
guidance of the instructor, works out his own plan of 
organization and administration. In the same way 
the student works out a course of study. The final 
result is a thesis consisting of one hundred and fifty 
or more typewritten pages, in which special attention 
is given either to the course of study or to a detailed 
discussion of organization and management. In the 
first case the student treats particularly his own 
specialty, for which all the details of the course of 
study, the teaching resources, and the methods of 
teaching must be fully considered. In the second case 
the student must develop his own plan for the organi- 
zation and administration of a school system in detail. 

1 It must be remembered that no two American cities have the same 
school system ; so that the school systems in neighboring cities differ 
from each other in countless ways. 



AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY 189 

The most advanced, i.e. the most specialized, work is 
done in the ** Seminary" (Course 6), and this course is 
intended only for the most advanced students. The 
students are chiefly principals or teachers of second- 
ary schools, and city superintendents of schools in the 
vicinity of the University, or students of the same class 
who are on leave of absence from their schools, or who 
have resigned their positions for the sake of further 
study. At the outset a general survey of present 
problems in education is undertaken. Such problems 
include questions pertaining to the Improvement of 
the School Course of Study, Educational Values, City 
and District Organization and Management of Schools 
and School Systems, Financial Support of the Public 
Schools, the Proper Equipment for Effective Work, and 
the Methods of Teaching. Soon after the Seminary 
is organized, each member selects some topic or topics 
for special study, and, later, presents the results of this 
study to the Seminary in the form of at least one 
essay during each half-year. As soon as preliminary 
or more detailed reports on their special topics are 
ready, the students present these reports to the Semi- 
nary in the form of essays. These essays usually 
occupy about an hour in the reading, and are then 
discussed by the members of the Seminary under 
the guidance of the instructor. As might be ex- 
pected, these essays often have more than a tem- 
porary value, and some of them have been published 



190 THE STUDY OF EDUCATION 

in the Educational Review^ and other leading edu- 
cational periodicals. In addition to the work in his 
special topic, each member of the Seminary is re- 
quired, during the year, to submit to the instructor 
a critical discussion of the educational doctrines of 
one of the following educational reformers : Comenius, 
Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Herbart ; and to re- 
port once a month on the bibliography of that part of the 
field of education in which he is especially interested. 

This chapter has referred directly only to the 
courses in Education and Teaching at Harvard Uni- 
versity. But mention must also be made of the fact 
that all of the Harvard courses in education are acces- 
sible to members of Radcliffe College, under suitable 
restrictions as to age and attainments. That is to say. 
Courses i and 2 are repeated at Radcliffe College, and 
permission has been granted to properly qualified Rad- 
cliffe students to attend Courses 3, 4, 5, and 6 at 
the University. Inasmuch as a large number of 
American college women become teachers, the wis- 
dom of this arrangement is apparent. 

In this chapter I have endeavored to point out 
briefly the importance of a knowledge of the princi- 
ples of education to all thinking persons, and to all 
college students in particular, whether they are to be 
teachers or not. And in the description of what 
the courses in education at Harvard University 
are designed to accomplish for teachers already in 



AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY 191 

service, and for the professional and non-professional 
students still in college, I have sought to remove pos- 
sible misconceptions in the minds of those to whom 
such courses are comparatively new, and to give 
some notion of their real aim. It will not be neces- 
sary in the light of what has gone before to explain 
that such courses do not exist as a sort of dispensary 
of patent "methods," nor to proclaim a "universally 
valid science of education" ; but to furnish professional 
guidance to teachers already in service, and to help 
young graduates to enter upon their profession as 
teachers with a more definite conception of the aims 
and the problems of education than has hitherto been 
the case. 



VIII 

THE PERMANENT INFLUENCE 
OF COMENIUS 



VIII 

THE PERMANENT INFLUENCE 
OF COMENIUS 

John Amos Comenius lived in the turbulent times 
that followed the Reformation. The frightful Thirty 
Years' War raged during the greater part of his 
maturity. He not only witnessed the wretchedness 
of other men, but was himself, as the Bishop of the 
Moravian Brethren, one of the greatest sufferers be- 
cause of the incessant warfare and persecutions. The 
period of his activity was, therefore, unfavorable to a 
lasting acceptance of the reforms which he inaugu- 
rated. After his death his great services to education 
were neglected, and a century and a half elapsed be- 
fore the principles which he had elaborated with 
such painstaking care and had advocated so ardently 
were rediscovered. Later reformers, until about the 
middle of the present century, rarely mention Come- 
nius; and, when they do, the reference is not to his 
greatest work. 

The object of this paper is to show that the cur- 
riculum and the methods Comenius strove to establish 

195 



196 THE PERMANENT INFLUENCE 

in the elementary schools of the seventeenth century 
are substantially the curriculum and the methods 
aimed at in the modern elementary school in Ger- 
many,^ and even more in this country; and that he 
is also to be credited with seeking to found a school 
system in which the lower courses should meet the 
higher **all along the upper line"; and with having 
discerned that his reforms, if adopted, would, doubt- 
less, evolve the free secular school. 

The first and most important of the educational 
writings of Comenius is his ** Great Didactic " {Didactica 
Magna)? This work contains the systematic presen- 
tation of his principles and method. His other writings 
are either supplementary to what is there presented, 
or are applications of it in the form of text-books. 
Comenius has expressed the main purpose of all his 
labors for education in the brief invocation prefixed 

1 " It is indisputable that the * Great Didactic ' of Comenius, based on 
natural laws, carefully elaborated in its details, and intended for the most 
wide-spread dissemination, was really something new ; that indeed the 
elementary school ( Volksschule), as evolved only in the nineteenth century, 
is therein foreseen and described." — cli. of Characteristik der Grossen 
Unterrichtslehre des Comenius, von Julius Beeger, Leipzig: vol. iii, of 
Richter's Pddagogische Bibliothek. See also Comenii Didactica Magna 
in Riicksicht auf die Volksschule, von Hermann Hoffmeister, Berlin. 

2 "The Didactic Art means the Art of Teaching." — Didactica 
Magna, "To the Reader," § i. Quotations are from the German transla- 
tion of the " Great Didactic," by Julius Beeger, and from the Amsterdam 
edition of 1657, loaned to the writer from the library at Washington 
through the courtesy of Hon. William T. Harris, Commissioner of Educa- 
tion. 



OF COMENIUS 197 

to his ** Great Didactic." *' May the guiding star and 
rudder of our Didactic be this : to search out and dis- 
cover a rule in accordance with which the teachers 
teach less, but the learners learn more ; the schools 
contain less noise and confusion, less aversion and 
vapid employment, but more of leisure of enjoyment 
and of solid progress ; the Christian state suffer less 
from an all-pervading gloom, from discord and de- 
rangement, but find more order, light, peace, and 
tranquillity." Compressed into these few sentences 
Comenius announces his dissatisfaction with the cur- 
riculum and the teaching in existing schools, and his 
intention to improve them. He deplores the distress 
of the people, due to their ignorance and the per- 
secutions of one sect by another or of one class by 
another, and he desires to remove these evils, as the 
sequel shows, by education. 

The course of thought in the " Great Didactic," so far 
as I am here concerned with it, is as follows. Begin- 
ning with the place of man in the universe as the last, 
the most complete, and the most excellent of living 
creatures, and with the assertion that man's final aim 
lies beyond this life,^ and passing thence to the func- 
tion of this life as a preparation for the life hereafter,^ 
Comenius shows that the three stages of man's prep- 
aration for eternity, viz. knowledge of himself and 
his environment, power over himself and external 

^ Chapters i. and ii. 2 Chapter iii. 



198 THE PERMANENT INFLUENCE 

nature (Virtue), and religious convictions (Piety), are 
to be attained only through education.^ Although 
the capacity for these three, knowledge, virtue, and 
piety, is innate,^ man, to become man through this 
capacity, must be educated.^ Moreover, this training 
is most easily effected in the early years of life, and 
can really proceed best during this time only.^ Now, 
if the young are to be educated, schools are necessary, 
and, hence, all the children of both sexes must be 
sent to school.^ " Not simply the children of quality 
or of the rich, but all, rich and poor, boys and girls, 
noble and commoner, in large and small cities, in 
towns and villages, are to be brought to school." It 
should be noted that Comenius insists upon the same 
educational opportunities for girls as for boys. " Why, 
indeed, should the female sex be excluded from 
the study of wisdom (whether in the Latin tongue 
or in German translations) ? For they are created 
equally in the image of God, equally partakers of 
Grace and of the future kingdom, equally endowed 
with an active, recipient spirit (often even more highly 
endowed than our own sex) . . . Why, then, should 
we admit them to the ABC, and afterward refuse 
them access to Books .-* " ^ 

Here, for the first time in the history of the world, 
the education of human beings for manhood and 

1 Chapter iv. ^ Chapter vi. ^ Chapters viii. and ix, 

2 Chapter v. ^ Chapter vii. ** Chapter ix. 



OF COMENIUS 199 

womanhood, for usefulness and happiness rather 
than for rank or station, is urged. The labors of 
Comenius have been described as the effort to bring 
humanity, in all its phases, to an adequate conscious- 
ness of itself, its worth and destiny, and to lead men 
"to eternal happiness in accordance with the will of 
God. It is no wonder that Comenius was fired by 
such an ideal to a life of arduous and protracted labor. 
An ideal all the more powerful at a time when there 
was no peace in Christendom, and happiness seemed 
to have left the earth. We can have no higher ideal 
to-day. The oppression and cruelty of past centuries 
are gone; constitutional government and religious tol- 
erance are established in their stead. Yet the per- 
manent improvement and happiness of the race is 
still, as it ever must be, the end of all of our striving. 
We are still carrying forward the work of civilization. 
The mightiest force in this work is the education of 
the young. " The first man who demanded training 
for every man or woman because he or she was a human 
being must always be thought of with respect and 
gratitude by all who care either for science or reli- 
gion." ^ This reform is still in progress. It is not, 
however, the only one of the great Bohemian's re- 
forms which we are now urging with earnestness, and 
for the most part, without the knowledge that they 
were advocated by him so long ago. 

1 R. H. Quick, " Educational Reformers," p. 148. 



2CX) THE PERMANENT INFLUENCE 

Comenius not only insisted upon the establishment 
of schools everywhere, and that all should attend them 
whether destined for the secondary school or not, but 
he demanded a reform in the subject-matter, and in 
the method of instruction. Instruction in the schools 
must be comprehensive. " It must be shown that all 
pupils are to learn everything.*' This must not be 
understood to mean the complete and thorough mas- 
tery of all arts and all knowledge (Kenntniss aller 
Wissenschaften und Kiinste) by every one. This is 
neither useful in itself, nor is it possible (chapter x.). 
But the elements of all arts and sciences are to be 
taught, so far as they fall within the capacity of the 
pupils' unfolding powers, at every stage, so that 
" when they are sent into the world, they appear 
not merely as observers, but as participators in its 
affairs." 

The elementary school is one of the fruits of the 
Reformation. It is only natural, therefore, that its 
first function should have been to guard and promote 
the interests of the new faith. Accordingly, its cur- 
riculum was, for a long time, narrow, and almost 
exclusively religious, — the Bible, the catechism, the 
hymn book. Reading and writing in the vernacular 
were introduced into the elementary-school curriculum 
of the Reformers as a preparation for and an instru- 
ment of religious instruction. This condition of affairs 
was quite reversed by Comenius. Instruction in the 



OF COMENIUS 201 

mother-tongue was no longer to be a subsidiary aim. 
Instead of merely encouraging instruction in the 
mother-tongue as an aid in teaching the Bible, the 
catechism, and the psalm book, Comenius elevated 
it into the first place in the curriculum. He did 
this because he believed it best adapted to promote 
the intellectual and moral development of men; be- 
cause he saw it was the best means of getting use- 
ful knowledge and a knowledge of nature through 
books and teachers, and because it offered the readiest 
means of promoting the learner's own activity. Thus 
the mother-tongue was to serve, first of all, as the 
universal instrument of education ; and, secondly, as 
the means of religious and sectarian training. This 
was a great step forward. Other improvements fol- 
lowed immediately. 

Comenius desired to introduce into the course of 
study computing, weighing, and measuring; singing, 
at first secular (popular), then sacred songs ; moral 
instruction, with examples adapted to the age of the 
pupils; the essentials of economics and politics, in 
their elements, for guidance in the most important 
state and business affairs; an outline of general his- 
tory; the most important facts and principles in 
geography and astronomy (Weltkunde); and, finally, 
a general knowledge of trades and the mechanic arts.^ 
Think of such a curriculum planned more than two 

1 Chapter xxix., " The Idea of the Vernacular (Elementary) School." 



202 THE PERMANENT INFLUENCE 

hundred years ago ! The school is to train the pupil 
in science and the arts, to refine and perfect his speech, 
to assist him in discovering and developing his powers 
of body and mind, and to shape and dignify his char- 
acter. What else have we moderns in mind when 
we talk about "enriching" the curriculum? 

But Comenius saw the necessity of other reforms. 
Not only are schools, accessible to all, to be estab- 
lished everywhere; not only is the curriculum to be 
rich and adapted to the differing needs and capacities 
of all, but a system is to be impressed upon the 
schools, and a method of teaching is to be employed 
through which the schools cannot fail to accomplish 
their mission. This system and method must consider 
both the learner and the subject-matter of instruction, 
and is to be universally applicable because it is in 
harmony with nature. "Art can do nothing but 
imitate Nature." This principle is discussed and 
exemplified in detail in chapters xiii. to xix. 

Briefly stated, Comenius insisted upon experience 
as the necessary basis of all real knowledge ; and, in 
particular, he insisted upon the use of the senses in 
acquisition, whenever they could be directly employed. 
In one place he speaks of "The golden rule" for the 
teacher : " Everything, whenever possible, should be 
presented to the senses, namely, the visible to sight, 
the audible to hearing, odors to the sense of smell, 
what is to be tasted to the sense of taste, and what can 



OF COMENIUS 203 

be touched to the sense of touch; and if anything 
can be seized by several senses at once, let it be pre- 
sented to them all simultaneously, in accordance with 
the directions given in chapter xvii., principle 8." 
The principle referred to deals with the necessary 
use of the senses in acquisition, and especially with 
the association of the knowledge gained through one 
sense with what is acquired through the others. The 
order of acquisition is from the concrete to the ab- 
stract, from thing to name and symbol, from facts to 
principles and rules. This seems commonplace to us 
now, in theory, but it was not so when Comenius 
urged — as Mulcaster and Ratke had done before 
him — its paramount importance as a method of in- 
struction " according to nature." ^ 

There is an important result of the method advocated 
by Comenius which must be referred to here. That 
method "according to nature" led him to use an 
illustrated school-book for the simultaneous acquisition 
of Realien and of language. From its first appear- 
ance, this book — the Orbis P ictus — was eagerly 
seized, immediately translated into other languages, 
and employed in many different countries. One who 
compares the beautifully illustrated school-books of to- 

^ On account of this doctrine, and because he insisted on the study of 
Realien (natural science and the useful arts), i.e. upon relating instruction 
to life, instead of following his predecessors in giving to Latin almost the 
whole of the time and attention of the school, Comenius has been called 
the leader of the " Realists." 



204 THE PERMANENT INFLUENCE 

day with the crudeness of the Orbis Picttis will doubt- 
less be struck by the great contrast between them. 
But, however crude this book was, here was the first 
school-book for children that appealed to their senses 
in the agreeable way peculiar to illustrated books ; and 
the evolution of the illustrated school-book dates from 
the Orbis Picttis. To Comenius, then, generations of 
children have been indebted and will continue to be 
indebted for the idea of the illustrated text-books 
that interest and please by their suggestiveness and 
beauty. 

Comenius urged still another important reform in 
the matter and method of teaching, the wisdom of 
which we are just learning to appreciate. This was 
the correlation and coordination of the different sub- 
jects in the curriculum throughout the pupil's entire 
career, and insistence on a due regard for individual 
capacities and tastes. "The studies of a lifetime 
must be so ordered that they form a single whole, in 
which everything has sprung from a single root, 
everything has its appropriate place. Everything 
that is presented must be so fastened with reasons 
that there is no easy chance either for doubt or for- 
getfulness." (Chapter xvii., § 35.) 

"And can we hope that the branches of wisdom 
can be torn asunder with safety to their life, that is, 
to truth .? Can one be a Natural Philosopher who is 
not also a Metaphysician } Or an Ethical Thinker 



OF COMENIUS 205 

who does not know something of Physical Science ? 
Or a Logician who has no knowledge of real mat- 
ters? Or a Theologian, a Jurisconsult, or a Physi- 
cian, who is not a Philosopher? Or an Orator or a 
Poet who is not all these at once? He deprives him- 
self of light, of hand, and of regulation who pushes 
away from him any shred of the knowable." ^ 

But in this comprehensive scheme account was 
also to be taken of individual tastes and capacities. 
"The attempt to compel Nature into a course to 
which she is not inclined is to quarrel with Nature, 
and is fruitless striving. . . . Since the teacher is 
the servant, not the master or the reconstructor of 
Nature, let him not drive forcibly when he sees the 
child attempting that for which he has no skill. . . . 
Let every one, unhindered, proceed with that to which, 
in accordance with the will of Heaven, his natural 
inclination attracts him, and he will later be enabled 
to serve God and humanity." (Chapter xix., problem 

8, § 54.) 

The school, with its "enriched" curriculum and its 
improved method of teaching, is to serve the purpose of 
fitting pupils for secondary and higher education, be- 
cause the higher courses are merely to extend and 
deepen the instruction begun in the lower. After stat- 
ing that his school system (chapter xxvii., § 3) is to 

1 Quoted in " Educational Reformers," by Quick, from the Delineation in 
Masson's " Life of Milton." 



206 THE PERMANENT INFLUENCE 

consist of, I. The Maternal School (The Home), to the 
seventh year ; 2. The Vernacular (Elementary) School, 
seventh to thirteen year ; 3. The Latin School (Gymna- 
sium), thirteenth to nineteenth year ; 4. The Academy 
(University) and Travel, nineteenth to twenty-fifth year 
— Comenius says : " Although these are different 
schools, yet I do not wish them to differ in the subject- 
matter of instruction, but the same things are to be 
presented in a different manner ; namely, everything 
that can help to develop man into man. Christian into 
Christian, Scholar into Scholar, conformably to the age 
and previous acquisition of the pupils, and ' to their 
preparation for what is to follow." In short, we have 
here not merely a school, but a school system, whose aim 
was the education of man for humanity, and whose 
method is the method of nature — a course of study 
adapted to the needs of all students, whether destined 
for the university or not. That is to say, the element- 
ary and the higher courses meet where they should 
meet, "all along the upper line," as was recently 
urged.^ Reforms in education, as in other human 
affairs, come slowly by evolution, more rapidly, though 
sometimes disastrously, by revolution. This particu- 

1 "The Relation of Grammar and High-School Education to Colle- 
giate," by Frank A. Hill — a paper read at the New England Association 
of Colleges and Preparatory Schools, October, 1891. As is well known, 
this meeting of the secondary and higher education is already approxi- 
mately realized in several of the Middle and Western States. 



OF COMENIUS 207 

lar reform is progressing slowly, but surely, by evo- 
lution. 

To sum up, Comenius had already attained, in the 
seventeenth century, the conception of the modern 
elementary school, because he insisted upon : — 

I. The equal education of both sexes, and of all 
classes of persons, through the universal establishment 
of schools, accessible to all. 

II. The improvement of the curriculum, by elevating 
the study of the mother-tongue to the first place, by 
introducing the study of history, geography, natural 
science, training in business and the mechanic arts 
(Unterweisung in den menschlichen Berufsarten), the 
elements of economics and civics, and moral training. 

III. A method of teaching ** according to nature," 
i.e. the constant use of the senses in acquisition (per- 
ception), and the attempt to adapt instruction to the 
individual needs, tastes, and capacities of the pupils. 

Further, in insisting that all classes and both sexes 
should attend the elementary school whether destined 
for higher courses or not, i.e. in planning his school 
system, Comenius sought to realize a scheme by which 
the lower courses should meet the higher, without any 
break, from the primary school to' the university. 
Finally, in his appeals to all men of rank and station in 
behalf of education, and in his repeated insistence upon 
schools for all, Comenius shows that he regarded edu- 
cation as a function of the State, untrammelled by 



208 THE PERMANENT INFLUENCE 

sectarian influences, and so foreshadowed the free 
secular school.^ 

There is a tradition that Comenius, while yet in the 
full vigor of his maturity, was invited to come to 
America, and become the president of Harvard College. 

In Cotton Mather's " History of Harvard College," 
in the Magnalia^ book iv., p. 127 (London, 1702), we 
find : " Mr. Henry Dunster continued the President 
of Harvard College until his unhappy Entanglement in 
the Snares of Anabaptism ; filled the Overseers with 
uneasie Fears. . . . Which Uneasiness was at length so 
signified unto him, that on October 24, 1654, he pre- 
sented unto the Overseers an Instrument under his 
Hands; wherein he Resigned his Presidentship, and 
they accepted his Resignation. That brave Old Man 
Johannes Amos Comenius the Fame of whose Worth 
hath been trii^npetted as far as more than Three Lan- 
guages (whereof every one is Endebted unto his Janud) 
could carry it, was indeed agreed with all by our Mr. 
Winthrop in his Travels through the Low Countries ^ to 
come over into New England and Illuminate this 
Colledge and coimtry^ in the Quality of a President^ 
which was now become vacant. But the solicitations of 
the Swedish Ambassador diverting him another way, 
that Incomparable Moravian became not an American'' 

1 See Herman Hoffmeister, Comenii Didadica Magna in Rucksicht 
auf die Volksschulcy p. 19, where reference is also made to Seyffarth, " Co- 
menius," p. 66. 



OF COMENIUS 209 

A diligent search among the archives of Harvard 
University has failed to confirm this tradition. There 
are also reasons for doubting Cotton Mather's state- 
ment quite apart from the absence of any existing 
record of the alleged invitation to Comenius. These 
reasons have been well stated by Mr. Will S. Monroe 
in the Educational Review for November, 1896, in 
an article entitled "Was Comenius called to Har- 
vard .? " 

Though Comenius himself did not come to America, 
his text-books, especially the Janua, did come. They 
seem to have been used as text-books here in Massa- 
chusetts ; perhaps in Harvard College itself, more 
probably in the Boston Latin School. If Mather's 
report were indeed true, and if " our Mr. Winthrop " 
had prevailed on Comenius to accept the invitation 
to become president of Harvard College, who can 
doubt that, in this freer air, his reforms would have 
taken root and flourished during his lifetime; and 
that some of the improvements we are now so ear- 
nestly seeking to introduce into our schools would 
have been adopted many years ago.^ 

1 " The writer has before him a copy of the Gate of Languages 
(^ Janua) printed in London, 1670. Fifty years after its publication it was 
the property of the writer's great-grandfather, a graduate of Harvard 
College of the class of 1724. Following the family line it belonged in 
181 3 to one of the writer's uncles, who graduated from Phillips Academy 
at Exeter, in that year, and went out of Harvard a member of the class of 
j8i§. It seems to have been a text-book in the College, and there are 

P 



210 THE PERMANENT INFLUENCE 

Comenius was born in Moravia in 1592. He died 
in Amsterdam in 1671. The key-note of his Hfe and 

other worn and stained copies in the library." — From "Boston as an Edu- 
cational Centre," by Arthur Oilman, a beautifully illustrated and excellent 
article in the Supplement to the Christian Union., July 4, 1891. 

Besides other text-books of Comenius, there are four copies of ihtjanua 
in the Harvard College library. One of t-hese, a Latin-Oreek edition, 
printed in Amsterdam in 1649, has on the fly-leaf the following suggestive 
legend : " Davenport, Sr. these are to entreat you to step up to Swan's 
Study and drink a glass of ale. So I rest yours to serve, Jno. Phillips." 
From the Quinquennial Catalogue it appears that John Phillips was a 
member of the class of 1735, John Davenport was a tutor from 1728 to 
1732, and Josiah Swan was a member of the class of 1733. If these are 
the worthies named on the fly-leaf it looks as if the freshman was induced 
to ask the tutor to step up to the junior's study for liquid refreshments. 
Those must have been happy times ! 

Two Latin-English editions oi \he fanua, London, 1673, and London, 
1650, bear the marks of much service; and the latter has on the fly-leaves 
many blotches of yellowish and reddish paint, besides ink drawings and 
scribblings in boyish scrawl. The former also has some boyish scribbling 
on the title-page, and on a fly-leaf at the back, in a mature hand, " This 
book belonged to Middlecote Cooke, the Or. Son of the immortal Elisha 
Cooke, and son of Elisha Cooke, a family that guided Mass. for 80 years 
by their virtue & patriotism. One of the best of books in itself con- 
sidered." 

The three Cookes are all graduates of Harvard College. They are 
also entered (doubtfully) in the list of graduates of the Boston Latin 
School. 

The other edition is Latin-Greek-French, printed at Amsterdam in 1643. 

In the absence of definite records, for which diligent search has been 
made, the appearance of these books, two of them especially, would indi- 
cate that they were used by boys somewhat younger than college 
boys. On the other hand, pupils were ready for college rather early in 
those days, and it may be that these copies of the /anua were decorated 
by Harvard boys while in college. 



OF COMENIUS 211 

labors is found in his own words : " I thank God that 
I have all my life been a man of aspirations . . . 
for the longing after good, however it springs up in 
the heart, is always a rill flowing from the fountain 
of all good, from God." 



The Meaning of Education 

WITH OTHER ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES 

BY 

NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER 

Columbia University 

Cloth. i2mo. $i.oo 

HAMILTON W. MABIE 

" I do not recall any recent discussion of educational 
questions which has seemed to me so adequate in knowl- 
edge and so full of genuine insight. I like the frankness, 
the honesty, and the courage of the papers immensely." 

state Supt. CHARLES R. SKINNER, Albany, N. Y. 

" A volume which will be eagerly sought and thoroughly 
enjoyed. It is clear, strong, and wholesome." 

REVIEW OF REVIEWS 

" We are sure that the teachers of the country will be glad 
to have these articles and addresses brought together in a 
single volume. On all that pertains to the science of edu- 
cation, no writer more readily commands assent than Dr. 
Butler." 

DETROIT FREE PRESS 

*'Dr. Butler's unfoldment of his views and theories is 
marked by clearness of statement, a lucid style, and deep 
thoughtfulness and logic. The book is suggestive and 
inspiring." 

» THE SENTINEL (Milwaukee) 

" Professor Butler's book is rife with ideas and suggestions 
which will render it valuable to all thoughtful people, and 
these are lucidly presented and urged in a most persuasive 
way." 

PUBLISHED BY 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF 
THE CHILD 



BY 



NATHAN OPPENHEIM 

Attending Physician to the Children's Department of 
Mt, Sinai Hospital Dispensary- 



i2mo. Cloth. $i.25» /7ef 



Journal of Education 

"This is an exceedingly helpful book. It is a book with 
a mission for mankind. The author has a great purpose, 
and his treatment is both scholarly and original." 

Child Study Monthly 

" This is one of the best child-study books that has ever 
appeared. It deals with facts that come from the closest 
observation and careful laboratory and clinical research." 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

66 FIFTH AVENUE, HEW YORK 



.A 



